Mohammed Ziane

The Honourable Bâtonnier Mohammed Ziane MP
Secretary of State for Human Rights
In office 13 August 1997 – 14 March 1998
Monarch	Hassan II
Prime Minister	Abdellatif Filali
Succeeded by	Mohamed Aujjar
Secretary-General of the Moroccan Liberal Party
Incumbent
Assumed office 2002
President	Isaac Charia
Member of the House of Representatives
In office 1980–1995
Personal details
Born	(1943-02-14) 14 February 1943 (age 78) Málaga, Spain
Nationality	Morocco Spain
Occupation	Politician
Known for	Founder of Moroccan Liberal Party

Mohammed Ziane (Arabic: محمد زيان, born 14 February 1943) is a Moroccan Riffian politician, Human Rights advocate, and lawyer. He served as the Secretary of State on Human Rights in 1996 for 11 months where he was the first and only Moroccan government official to resign during his tenure. He is a former Member of the House of Representatives of Morocco (MP) from 1980 to 1995 and has served as Secretary-General of the Moroccan Liberal Party since 2002, a party he founded. ^[1]

Political activity[]

Ziane has been an outspoken critic of the Moroccan government in recent years, and a regular contributor to public debate about current affairs in the media. He has espoused many hot issues such as the murder of Riffian fishmonger Mouchine Fikri, who was crushed to death in a garbage truck by the Moroccan authorities, and the arrest of Riffian activist and political leader Nasser Zefzafi.

As a lawyer[]

Ziane has been involved in a number of high-profile cases, including the defense of army mutineers of the 1971 failed coup attempts, as well as a number of cases involving the Moroccan state in the 1990s, in particular one against trade-unionist Nubir al-Amawi.

More recently, Ziane was the lawyer of the Moroccan intelligence service in a defamation case against journalist Aboubakr Jamai in 2007.^[2], and in late May 2017, after the arrest of Riffian leader Nasser Zefzafi and about a hundred other activists of the Hirak Rif Movement, he joined their defence team.He was arrested on at at least 10 charges including sexual charges.

Personal life[]

Mohammed was born in Southern Andalucia, Spain as the son of an affluent Riffian merchant and a Spanish lady. He spent the first years of his life in Málaga, before settling with his father in Tangier during the mid-1950s, where he was raised by his paternal grandmother.

Ziane has stated that his grandfather was the cousin of Abd el-Krim, Riffian anti-colonial revolutionary and President of the Republic of the Rif. He is a member of the Ait Ouriaghel Rifian tribe.

In several interviews, Ziane revealed that he married several times and has had 7 male sons, in addition to adopting 8 others from his various other unions. One of his former wives is the daughter of Hassan II's senior advisor and Moroccan-Minister Ahmed Reda Guidera.

References[]