29 October 1959 had to be seen in the context of the circumstances which had At that time, traders had mixed toxic mineral given rise to its promulgation. oils and detergents with vegetable oil and had put the resulting product On the market. As a consequence, 26,000 people had been paralysed and the Since 1959, there had catastrophe had been considered a national disaster. been no prosecutions under that &&i&r because no similar catastrophe had An ad hoc committee presided over by the Minister of Justice or his occurred. deputy and consisting of a number of senior officials met at least seven times a year to consider pardons, and its comments were submitted to the King. On COUfU6iOn the question of disappearances in the Sahara, there wa6 COnSiderable over names, and the authorities frequently found themselves working on the The fate of General Oufkir’s family wa6 an basis of incorrect information. internal affair to which an appropriate solution would be found by the King. The question of the Oufkir fsmily was not a matter in which international organisations or the State itself had been concerned; the lawyer in the case, at that time practising at the Paris Bar, had failed to respect the procedure laid down in the &&,&which required him to contact a Moroccan lawyer and to submit a request through the Ministry of Justice , and his action had therefore been declared inadmissible. Civil trials in Morocco were conducted in accordance with the Code of Civil Procedure and crimina3 trials in accordance Abortion was prohibited in Morocco and with the Code of Criminal Procedure. subject to penalties under the Criminal Code. That Code also stated@ houever, that no penalty would be imposed if the health of the mother was such as to justify abortion. He noted that there were no political crimes in Morocco, although there were offences of opinion under the f&&i& of 15 November 1958. A crime against the external or internal security of the State was not a political offence but an ordinary offence under the jurisdiction of the or<:’ nary courts. the representative explained that 251, With respect to placles of detention, the prison administration was organised along hierarchical lines, with a central prison, several rural open-air prisons and 6ome civil prisons. None of the detention centres to which members of the Committee had referred iias j known to him. There was no Tasmamart prison in the list of place6 of ', detention under the prison administration. With regard to death6 during ;; detention, he said that in some cases of death during detention, the coroner 5 had found, following a post-mortem examination, that death had resulted from 1 violence leading to complications such a6 kidney failure. It had not been iigf possible to discover who was responsible for those abuses, but one case of assault and battery involving unintentional homicide was currently before the :.z court in Casablanca. A number of officers had been sentenced to varying periods of imprisonment for offences including repel forcible entry into the i;^! -.~ home and arbitrary detention. s; _i nt of wrwners & ot&r de1 _ ; Y + 7 252. In connection with that issue, members of the Committee wished to know whether there had been any complaints about torture or other mistreatment of prisoners or other detainees during the reporting period or any proseoutions or convictions under article 231 of the Criminal Code; whether information could be provided regarding prison regimes and conditions of detention in Morocco: and whether the provisions of the a of 11 April 1915 and the da& of 26 June 1930 were compatible with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. -63-