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Was Alaedine Armouti guilty of financial embezzlement and abuse of power, as the lawsuits against him suggest? Or rather, is the lawyer paying the price for his zeal at the head of the National Center for Human Rights (CNDH) in Jordan, one of the institutions serving as a showcase for the modernization of the Hashemite kingdom? His trial before the criminal court in Amman opened in September 2022. European diplomats, including French, are attending the hearings, as a sign of disapproval of the judicial harassment to which Mr. Armouti is subject.
The commissioner general of the CNDH, a position assigned by royal decree, intended to fulfill his mission with determination. The body, although funded by the government, is supposed to be independent. Its role is to document violations of human rights and to promote respect for these rights among various segments of society, such as judges, police officers, journalists. But Mr. Armouti’s outspokenness visibly irritated the authorities.
Unlike most of his predecessors, the manager did not content himself with publishing reports, which were quickly forgotten. He loudly criticized the drastic curfews imposed by the government to stem the Covid-19 pandemic, the repression of the teachers’ protest movement, in 2019-2020, which ended in the arbitrary closure of their unions. , and restrictions on the right to demonstrate. At the beginning of 2021, during a press conference, he also took the liberty of denouncing the pressures and the buying of votes which enamelled the legislative elections of 2020. The electoral commission had replied by judging these attacks “too general” and “imprecise”.
But it is probably Mr. Armouti’s critical statements about the 2022 constitutional amendments, strengthening the king’s hold on the institutions and the security services, which have finished ulcerating the crown. In May, the ax fell, causing astonishment: the commissioner was suspended from his duties by the board of directors of the CNDH, which invoked an investigation into a project financed by foreign donors, including the European Union.
authoritarian drift
During the summer of 2022, the judicial machine is set in motion: the prosecutor indicts Alaedine Armouti as well as three other members of the center for negligence, embezzlement, waste of public money… Charges “manufactured, intended to keep me away”, denounces the person concerned, experienced to find himself on the dock. US human rights organization Dawn (Democracy for the Arab World Now) points to accusations “fallacious”.
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