Morocco’s head of the government, Mr. Abdellilah Benkirane, reacted during the last Government Council to a footage showing a Swedish policeman chokeholding a 9-year-old Swedish boy of Moroccan origins(video underneath).
Morocco’s head of the government said that what happened is unacceptable and harshly condemned, with the strongest terms, the chokeholding of any kid in the world.
Benkirane said that “the event is a result of the growing Islamophibia scourge taking place in various European countries,” further stressing that it is unacceptable for any sane person too see what happened and not react, especially in a country like Sweden, well-respected and loved by Moroccans as they consider it a model to follow in human rights and democracy.
“The chokehold of the kid is barbaric,” Benkirane further noted.
Even though the 9-year-old kid and his friend run away from a center for kids with psychosocial difficulties and that they embarked on a train without paying, the policeman reaction remains, to say the very least, incomprehensible.
According to a Swedish citizen The Moroccan Times contacted, and who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, “there’s two different angles to this story. One is the increment of islamophobia in Sweden. The second is these security guards are often up for debate what kind of powers they should have.”
“The police in the city of Malmö came out at first in support for the guard [who chokeholded the kid]. But now the police chief of Sweden said ‘these are kids’ so he’s leaning perhaps to indict the guard in question,” the Swedish citizen told The Moroccan Times.
The footage (video underneath) was recorded by a bystander and was for many viewers a reminiscence of last summer’s tragic event which saw the passing away of African American Eric Garner, who was wrestled to the ground in a chokehold by an New York Police Department officer before turning limp.
Back-then, Gardner was recorded gasping ‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” few minutes before being declared dead. The 9-year-old Swedish boy was also heard gasping the Shahada, “I bear witness that there is no God but God the Almighty, and that Mohammed is the prophet of God,” which explains that he was expecting death to take him away.
The Moroccan Times.
