Moroccan Minister of Justice Abdellatif Ouahbi signed Thursday in Strasbourg the 2nd Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime.
The protocol was signed by dozens of countries on the sidelines of a two-day international conference on enhanced cooperation and disclosure of electronic evidence, held at the Council of Europe in the French city.
Ouahbi said cybercrimes are by nature transcontinental crimes, which do not recognize the geographical borders of countries, adding that it is in this context that the Budapest Convention came to provide answers and solutions.
“This convention, adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on November 8, 2001, has harmonized the criminal policy of Member States in the field of cybercrime and facilitated coordination between the various national authorities in the fight against cybercrime,” he said.
In addition, Ouahbi said the Convention helped establish the procedural rules of international cooperation characterized by speed, efficiency and accuracy.
“Aware of the importance of this issue, the growing threat of cybercrime in the world and its social, economic and psychological repercussions, and given its regional context, where armed terrorist groups using cyberspace as a tool to promote their calling for bloodshed and intimidation of innocents, Morocco has expressed its willingness to engage with the member states of the Budapest Convention through its accession to this mechanism officially on October 1, 2018,” he said.
In this regard, and in order to reaffirm its involvement in the relentless fight against cybercrime, the Kingdom subscribed to the first additional protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, concerning the criminalization of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems, Ouahbi explained.
He then noted that after ratifying the Budapest Convention and its first additional protocol, Morocco was willing to express its effective and serious involvement in the fight against cybercrime in all its forms and has developed a draft criminal law criminalizing many acts related to cybercrime, which until recently posed great challenges to Moroccan justice.
Ouahbi said that the Convention aims mainly to strengthen cooperation and disclosure of evidence between member states through new methods.
