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afrol.com, 30 September 2000 - Transparency International today gave an award to Moroccan Air Force captain Mustapha Adib for his courage in denouncing his corrupt superiors. The act cost him a five years prison sentence by the Military Court of Rabat.
Transparency International (TI), the global anti-corruption organisation, yesterday announced the first winners of its new Integrity Awards. "Fighting corruption requires enormous personal courage in many countries and today we are honouring people who have put their lives on the line," said Peter Eigen, Chairman of TI. He added: "We are recognising the courage and dedication of individuals and organisations fighting corruption around the world." Stationed at an air base in Southern Morocco in 1998, Captain Adib was approached by his superiors with a proposition involving the illegal sale of fuel allocated to the base. Captain Adib refused to participate, instead choosing to report their activities directly to the head of the armed forces, Crown Prince Muhammad. After an inquiry, the officers behind the trafficking were sentenced and discharged from the army. The court cleared Captain Adib. But by blowing the whistle on the corruption he encountered, Captain Adib had made himself very unpopular. Soon after the trial, he began to experience a series of problems which severely compromised his military career: he was transferred from base to base, systematically ostracised and arbitrarily disciplined. Captain Adib responded by taking his complaint about the military to a civil court, a move unprecedented in the Moroccan armed forces. There, he requested the annulment of the disciplinary measures imposed on him by the military. This produced no results. Captain Adib therefore requested to be discharged from the army. This too was ignored. He therefore took his story to the international media, agreeing to be cited in an article on corruption in the Moroccan military in the French daily Le Monde in December 1999. Soon after, Captain Adib was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison by a military court in Rabat. His trial was denounced by Moroccan and international human rights organisations on many counts. Firstly, among the judges was a commanding officer against whom Captain Adib had previously filed a complaint. Furthermore, key witnesses called by the defence were not heard. The trial was also held behind closed doors. Captain Adib's lawyer launched an appeal with Morocco's Supreme Court with no immediate response. The legal system having failed him, Captain Adib resorted to a hunger strike from prison in May 2000 that attracted wide popular support. In June, the Supreme Court finally overturned the initial five-year prison sentence and returned the case to the military court. The outcome will be closely followed by the international community and Captain Mustapha Adib's courage in exposing institutionalised corruption will continue to serve as an important example to others. The award was presented to the winners or their representatives today in Ottawa, Canada. TI Chairman Eigen said: "We have introduced the TI Integrity Awards to help raise the global awareness of corruption and to recognise the tremendous courage and outstanding accomplishments of individuals and organisations who are working at the grassroots level to curb corruption." Source:
Transparency International
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Blowing the whistle on your superiors is risky business. And, as Mustapha Adib discovered, this rings particularly true in the tight hierarchy of the Moroccan military. Once a captain in the Royal Armed Forces, today he is more familiar with the walls of a prison cell. For daring to denounce corruption in the military and bringing it to the attention of the international media, the 32 year-old captain was charged with 'breaching discipline' and 'slandering the army' and sentenced to five years in prison.
