Filali's father said she was pressured to marry to save honor скачать в хорошем качестве

Filali's father said she was pressured to marry to save honor

The recent suicide of 16-year-old Amina Filali, the young Moroccan woman from the northern city of Larache, who was forced to marry her rapist has created a furor in her country. Women took to the streets of the capital Rabat as well as other towns demanding the revision of a law that permits underage rape victims to be married off to their attacker in a bid to save their family's honor. The lawyer Michele Zirari-Devif was quoted on a regional website as saying that suspected rapists can still be pursued through courts even if they are married to their victims, but cannot be prosecuted unless the woman's tutor requests her marriage be annulled. Devif also said Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code needs to be amended to prevent further misinterpretations of the law, as happened in the case of Filali where the assumption lay in the marriage nulling the crime committed. Filali's mother, Zhora Bellamalem believes the entire village is responsible for what happened to her daughter as she felt pressured into saving face which ultimately led her to consume rat poison and end her life. Filali's father did not approve of the marriage, but he too felt a sense of pressure and feared societal shame. "She was too young to be responsible for a family; She was studying. I told her that if it was the general attorney who took this decision, then it was up to him to go ahead because I did not agree with him. She told me that the judge insisted that I should be present. My wife also said that if I did not agree to the marriage then I would be the laughing stock of the entire village," says Lahcen Filali. The alleged rapist in question, Mustapha Kellak, an unemployed labourer from the same village of Kmis Sahel, was accused by his mother--in-law of sexually assaulting her daughter and charges were pressed against him. However, court documents soon revealed that he was in a consenting relationship with Filali so he has not been prosecuted He denies holding Amina Filali at knifepoint before allegedly raping her and said that she had confirmed at the Tangiers court that she was in fact involved in a relationship with him. The organization Hands Off My Children is calling for an end to underage marriage but the procedure is not as straightforward says minister of Justice and Civil Liberties, Mustapha Ramid. "It is very difficult to change this text and our ministry is determined to keep it even if we have objections about the way it is applied sometimes. If we want to annul the marriage of those who are under 18, we have to make sure that families in the rural areas and also in the areas that are far from the cities are not marrying their daughters without legal marriage documents," he said. Morocco said on Thursday it would look into modifying the controversial law. According to official data, one in eight rural Moroccan women between the age of 15-18 was married in 2010. By Noora Faraj Al Arabiya with Agencies