II A worldwide organisation of judges and lawyers is backing
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the campaign to free British lorry driver Steve Bryant from his Moroccan jail.
The Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has told the UK legal pressure group Fair Trials Abroad that it will press Moroccan human rights organisations to lobby their own Ministry of Justice on behalf of Bryant. The British driver has always protested his innocence of drugs smuggling, for which he is serving 10 years.
The ICJ is said to be "shocked" that the carriage of drugs—even if knowledge of them is denied by a lorry driver—is an absolute offence in Morocco, carrying an automatic sentence of imprisonment.
The move by the ICJ, a body made up of lawyers and judges from across the world, follows earlier pressure on the Moroccans by Bryant's Euro MP Hugh Kerr, CM readers and Fair Trials Abroad.
Bryant won new privileges in Tangier jail at the end of November after a 25-day hunger strike in protest over lack of progress on his appeal.