Morocco Jails Six Rif Leaders as Demands for Dignity Go Unaddressed

Morocco marks the tenth anniversary of the Rif uprising on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, with six figures from the Hirak movement still serving long prison terms. Nasser Zefzafi, who led the protests, is serving a 20-year sentence, as is Nabil Ahamjik, arrested in 2017. The demonstrations that swept northern Morocco began on October 28, 2016, when fishmonger Mouhcine Fikri was crushed inside a rubbish truck in Al Hoceima as he tried to retrieve his confiscated catch.

The protests grew into demands to end poverty, marginalisation and underdevelopment in the Rif. Historian Maati Monjib called it the most significant social movement in Morocco since King Mohammed VI took the throne in 1999. Authorities allowed the marches to proceed for months, then launched a crackdown in late May 2017 that produced hundreds of arrests. Officials called the movement separatist; Monjib said that characterization was false and aimed at discrediting the protesters' stated goals. He said only a small minority of activists, mostly writing in Facebook groups, ever raised separatism, and that the imprisoned leaders did not.

The security forces' response turned deadly on July 20, 2017, when riot police deployed tear gas and batons against demonstrators in Al Hoceima. Imad el-Attabi, 22, was badly hurt in that confrontation and died the following month. His death drew solidarity marches across the country that summer. Rights organisations have since documented allegations of torture, ill-treatment in custody and unfair trial proceedings connected to the arrests.

Ahamjik's brother Mohamed said he was motivated by a refusal of 'hogra', a term for humiliation and oppression. Moved between prisons, Ahamjik ended up in Tangier, where he wrote a master's thesis on the Rif's relationship to the state and scored 18 out of 20. Now a doctoral student, he went on a 10-day hunger strike last month after he was denied space to work on his PhD.

The crackdown reached beyond Morocco's borders. Said El Amrani, who left for Belgium in the 1990s, has not returned since 2016. He said at least 11 activists have been arrested on arrival in Morocco since the movement began, and one remains jailed. He also said manipulated images of his daughter circulated online, and counted at least five police stations built in the Rif since the protests.

The Rif has a record of revolt under outside and domestic pressure, from the 1921 to 1926 war against Spanish and French forces to the rule of Hassan II. Jamal El Khattabi said he was tortured in Casablanca in 1989 before fleeing to Spain, then settling in the Netherlands. Constitutional amendments after the 2011 Arab Spring formally curtailed the monarchy's powers, but Monjib said hopes for reform faded. Last year's Gen Z protests over public services, unemployment and corruption were suppressed within weeks, producing 6,000 arrests; the Moroccan Association for Human Rights counts roughly 700 people still jailed, including dozens of minors.

Economic growth has been steady, and last month the kingdom elected its first female prime minister, yet youth unemployment stands at 37 percent. This summer, tens of thousands of people, many of them young Moroccans from the Rif, attempted to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The state has opened a new faculty affiliated with the University of Tetouan and built a hospital; El Amrani said the hospital lacks sufficient medical staff. Monjib said the movement's core aim persists: dignity and equal recognition for every Moroccan.