Ship Arrest in Morocco: Grounds, Procedure and Release

Yes. A vessel lying in a Moroccan port can be arrested as a conservatory measure to secure a claim connected with it. The arrest is a security measure: it holds the ship, or its value in the form of security, while the underlying dispute is resolved. It is not the judicial sale of the ship, and it does not by itself decide who owes what.

The arrest may rest on an enforceable title or, far more often, on the authorisation of a judge obtained on application, without the shipowner being heard first. For a vessel flying the flag of a State party to the 1952 Brussels Arrest Convention, the claim must be a maritime claim within the meaning of that Convention, to which Morocco is a party. The judge may require the applicant to provide security as a condition of the authorisation.

For the shipowner, the central rule is equally direct: the arrest must be lifted when good and sufficient security is provided. Where the parties cannot agree on that security, the court fixes its nature and amount. After an arrest, the claimant still has to pursue the dispute on its merits, in Morocco or before the competent foreign court or arbitral tribunal, within the applicable period.

The Moroccan Maritime Commerce Code deals with two different procedures in two separate sections. Conservatory arrest (saisie conservatoire), governed by Article 110, secures a claim. It can be obtained without an existing enforceable title, on a judge's authorisation, and its purpose is to keep the ship — or security in its place — available to the creditor.

Enforcement seizure (saisie-exécution), governed by Articles 111 to 121, is a different stage. It follows an enforceable title, starts with a formal demand for payment and can lead to the sale of the vessel by the court of the place of seizure and the distribution of the proceeds. The 1952 Convention draws the same line: in its sense, arrest means detention of a ship to secure a maritime claim, and it does not include seizure of a ship in execution of a judgment.

This guide is about conservatory arrest: obtaining it, living with it and ending it. Enforcing a final judgment or award against a vessel, and the judicial sale that may follow, belong to the enforcement stage.

Three layers of law apply, and they fit together in a defined order. The first is the Maritime Commerce Code annexed to the dahir of 31 March 1919, whose Article 110 — amended and supplemented by Law 46-12 in 2016 — sets the core rules on conservatory arrest, security, release and immobilisation.

The second is the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to the Arrest of Sea-going Ships, signed in Brussels on 10 May 1952. Morocco deposited its accession on 11 July 1990, the Convention entered into force for Morocco on 11 January 1991, and it was published in the Official Bulletin no. 4878 of 1 March 2001. The Convention defines maritime claims, determines which ships may be arrested, requires release against sufficient security and deals with jurisdiction over the merits.

The third is Law 58.25 on civil procedure, in force since the end of August 2026. It supplies the general procedural machinery — the competent judge, the order on application, the conservatory-attachment rules and the remedies — and applies to all procedures for which no special text provides. Its Article 640 gives ratified and published international conventions priority over its procedural rules. In practice, therefore: the Convention first where it applies, the Maritime Code as the special domestic text, and Law 58.25 to fill in the procedure.

Morocco is bound by the 1952 Brussels Arrest Convention. It is not a party to the International Convention on Arrest of Ships adopted in Geneva in 1999, which uses a different and broader list of maritime claims. Material written for 1999 Convention States should not be applied to an arrest in Morocco.

Under the 1952 Convention, a ship flying the flag of a contracting State may be arrested in another contracting State only in respect of a maritime claim. A ship flying the flag of a non-contracting State may be arrested in respect of a listed maritime claim or of any other claim for which Moroccan law permits arrest. Where a Moroccan-flagged ship is arrested in Morocco by a person residing or having a principal place of business in Morocco, the Convention leaves domestic law untouched.

The Convention does not replace Moroccan procedure. It expressly leaves the rules of procedure for the arrest, for obtaining the authorisation and for incidental questions to the law of the State where the arrest is made or applied for — in Morocco, the Maritime Code and Law 58.25.

In a Convention case, the starting point is the closed list of maritime claims in Article 1 of the 1952 Convention. A maritime claim is defined as the allegation of a right or claim arising from one of the listed causes, and the claimant is a person alleging such a claim. At the arrest stage, the claim is asserted, not yet proved: the merits are decided later.

Moroccan domestic law does not contain a separate list of this kind. Outside the Convention's scope, arrest rests on Article 110 and on the general conservatory-attachment requirements of Law 58.25, under which the order is granted to secure a debt that appears serious and likely, with the amount fixed, even approximately.

Three ideas are often run together and should be kept apart. A maritime claim is what can justify an arrest. A maritime privilege is a ranking right over the ship, limited by the Maritime Code to a short list of claims — among them certain court costs and port dues, crew claims, pilotage, towage and upkeep in the conditions the Code sets, salvage, and some insurance premiums. The right to arrest comes from the title or the judge's authorisation.

The practical consequence is that having an arrestable claim does not mean being paid ahead of other creditors. Many maritime claims — supplies are an obvious example — can support an arrest without carrying a privilege. The Convention itself states that it confers no right to follow the ship beyond what national law or the applicable liens convention grants. Some privileges are also short-lived: the Code extinguishes several of them, such as port dues and pilotage, when the vessel leaves the port where the debt arose.

Under Article 3 of the 1952 Convention, the claimant may arrest either the particular ship in respect of which the maritime claim arose, or any other ship owned by the person who, at the time the claim arose, was the owner of that particular ship — even if the ship arrested is ready to sail. Ships are deemed to be in the same ownership when all the shares in them are owned by the same person or persons.

That sister-ship option does not apply to every claim. For disputes about title or ownership, disputes between co-owners about ownership, possession, employment or earnings, and mortgage claims, only the particular ship concerned may be arrested.

Where a ship has been chartered by demise — the charterer having taken over its management — and the charterer alone is liable for the maritime claim, the claimant may arrest that ship or any other ship owned by the charterer, but no other ship of the registered owner. The same applies in any case where a person other than the registered owner is liable for the claim.

The Convention also prevents repeated arrests for the same claim: a ship may not be arrested, and security may not be given, more than once in the jurisdiction of contracting States for the same maritime claim by the same claimant. If security has already been provided for release, a later arrest of that ship or a sister ship for the same claim is to be lifted, unless the claimant shows that the earlier security was finally released or that there is another good reason to maintain the new arrest.

Under Law 58.25, orders on application are granted by the president of the first-instance court, or the head of the specialised section of the first-instance court, or their deputy. Conservatory attachment is ordered, on application, by the president of the court or the president's deputy.

The court itself depends on the nature of the claim. Law 58.25 gives the commercial first-instance courts and the specialised commercial sections jurisdiction over, among other things, disputes relating to commercial contracts and disputes between traders relating to their commercial activities. For conservatory measures in commercial matters, it assigns territorial jurisdiction to the commercial court or commercial section in whose district the measure is to be carried out — or, where there is no commercial court or section in that district, to the first-instance court. For a ship, the place where the measure is carried out ordinarily points to the port where the vessel lies.

Not every maritime claim is necessarily commercial. Crew wages, personal injury and other claims may be characterised differently, and that characterisation can change the competent judicial route. It is one of the first points to settle before filing, because an application made to the wrong judge wastes time the claimant may not have.

The substantive rules are national: the Maritime Code, the 1952 Convention and Law 58.25 apply in the same way whether the vessel lies in Casablanca, Tangier Med, Agadir, Nador or any other Moroccan port. There is no separate ship-arrest regime for a particular port.

What the port changes is where the application is made and where the arrest is carried out. Because territorial jurisdiction for commercial conservatory measures follows the place where the measure is to be executed, a vessel lying at the Port of Agadir makes its location in Agadir relevant to identifying the competent court. The same reasoning applies to a vessel lying at any other Moroccan port, and to the local authority that will receive notification of an immobilisation order.

The legal requirements are functional rather than a fixed list. The application must summarise the facts and grounds and be accompanied by supporting documents; the judge must be satisfied that the claim appears serious and likely; and the order fixes the amount secured. In a Convention case, the file also has to show that the claim falls within the list of maritime claims and that the ship targeted is one the Convention allows to be arrested.

Which documents do that job depends entirely on the claim. A supplier's case, a cargo claim and a crew claim rest on very different paper. The list below describes what is commonly used; it is not a mandatory checklist, and a file does not fail simply because one item is missing if the claim is otherwise shown.

One of the most practical rules in Article 110 is easy to miss: the arrest decision must state expressly whether or not the vessel is immobilised. An arrest order that does not provide for immobilisation does not, by itself, keep the ship in port. A creditor who needs the vessel held must ask for immobilisation and make sure the order says so.

Where the order provides for immobilisation, the vessel is immobilised in the port where it lies. Once the order is notified, the competent administration of that place takes the measures needed to prevent the ship from sailing, including withdrawal of its papers, until release or the lifting of the immobilisation is in turn notified. An arrest of shares in a co-owned vessel representing less than half of its value must not lead to immobilisation.

Timing matters in port. An order that has not reached the competent local authority before the ship slips its moorings does not stop it from leaving, which is why coordination between the application, execution and notification is part of the work, not an afterthought.

Port police legislation also gives the port authority control over where an arrested vessel is berthed and allows it to require the vessel to be moved to another berth or to the roads where port operations call for it, at the owner's cost and under its responsibility. A port officer cannot be appointed custodian of a vessel under a conservatory arrest order. Other administrations may be concerned in particular situations, but no single list of authorities is involved in every arrest.

Cargo is a separate interest. Where the claim does not relate to the cargo on board the arrested ship, the person entitled to that cargo may dispose of it with the authorisation of the judge who ordered the arrest.

For a shipowner or operator, release is usually the immediate objective, and the law gives several routes to it. Article 110 of the Maritime Code requires the arrest to be lifted immediately if good and sufficient security is provided, and allows the defendant to apply to the judge who authorised the arrest for it to be lifted.

Article 5 of the 1952 Convention imposes the same logic in Convention cases: the court or other competent judicial authority within whose jurisdiction the ship was arrested shall permit its release upon sufficient bail or other security being furnished. The exception concerns disputes about ownership and co-ownership, possession, employment or earnings; there, the judge may instead permit the person in possession to operate the ship on providing sufficient guarantees, or may regulate its operation during the arrest.

Two protective rules for the shipowner come with the Convention: a request for release against security is not to be construed as an acknowledgement of liability, nor as a waiver of the benefit of the legal limitation of the shipowner's liability. Release can therefore be sought without conceding the claim.

Where the parties cannot agree on the security, Article 5 of the Convention requires the court to fix its nature and amount. Under Law 58.25, the president may in all cases order a conservatory attachment to be lifted against a bank guarantee or cash deposited with the court's cash office, or any other means approved by the government authority responsible for justice. The Maritime Code speaks of good and sufficient security.

No statute sets a formula, a percentage or a standard uplift for the amount. The general rule is that the attachment must not extend beyond what is necessary to secure payment of the debt, and the amount fixed in the order is the natural reference point. Where the merits are to be decided by another court, the security must be sufficient to satisfy any judgment that court may eventually give.

In international shipping, parties often discuss other forms of security among themselves, such as undertakings from the shipowner's insurers. Whether a particular form is acceptable is a matter for agreement between the parties or for the court's decision in the proceeding concerned; it should not be assumed.

Beyond release against security, the arrest can be contested. Under Law 58.25, the person whose property is attached may object to the conservatory order within eight days of its notification, before the president acting as urgent-matters judge. If it appears that the applicant was not entitled to the measure, or has delayed pursuing the claim without justification, the attachment may be lifted in whole or in part.

The attachment must also be proportionate. It may not extend beyond what is necessary to secure the debt, and the person whose property is attached may ask the urgent-matters judge to reduce it. In Convention cases, a second arrest for the same claim by the same claimant is itself a ground for release, as explained above.

An arrest is not an end in itself. The claimant has to commence proceedings on the merits within the applicable statutory or court-fixed period, and missing that period may lead to release of the vessel or discharge of the security.

Two sets of rules are relevant. Under the general conservatory-attachment rules of Law 58.25, a creditor who has not already brought the merits action must do so within ten days of the order, or of the due date stated in the title, failing which the president orders the attachment to be struck out. The 1952 Convention, for its part, lets the arresting court fix the period within which the claimant must bring the action where the Moroccan court has no jurisdiction over the merits or where the parties have agreed on another court or on arbitration. How the general rule and the Convention's court-fixed periods interact in a particular Convention case is not settled by the texts themselves, so the period that applies to a given arrest should be confirmed at the outset rather than assumed.

Under Article 7 of the Convention, the courts of the State where the arrest was made have jurisdiction over the merits where their domestic law gives them jurisdiction, or in defined cases: where the claimant has its habitual residence or principal place of business in that State, where the claim arose there, where it arose during the voyage in which the arrest was made, where it results from a collision or from salvage, or where it is secured by a mortgage on the arrested ship. An arrest does not by itself give Moroccan courts jurisdiction over the merits in every case.

A clause sending the dispute to a foreign court or to arbitration does not, in itself, prevent an arrest in Morocco. The 1952 Convention expressly contemplates an arrest in one State while the merits are decided elsewhere.

Where the arresting court has no jurisdiction over the merits, the security provided for release must be sufficient to guarantee satisfaction of any judgment later given by the competent court, and the arresting court fixes the period within which the claimant must bring the action before that court. Where the contract contains a jurisdiction clause or an arbitration clause, the arresting court may fix a period within which the claimant must commence the merits proceedings. If the action is not brought within the period fixed, the defendant may apply for the arrest to be lifted or for the security to be released.

A judgment or award obtained abroad is not directly enforceable in Morocco: recognition of a foreign judgment or of a foreign arbitral award follows its own procedure before it can be enforced against Moroccan assets.

For a claimant, this means the Moroccan arrest and the foreign proceedings have to be planned together from the start. For a shipowner, it means the forum clause does not stop the arrest, but it does frame the timetable the claimant must meet.

Nothing in the framework limits arrest to Moroccan creditors. The Convention defines a person as including individuals, partnerships and corporate bodies, as well as States and public authorities, and the claimant as anyone alleging a maritime claim. Foreign suppliers, repairers, cargo owners, charterers, shipowners and their insurers are all potential applicants, depending on the claim.

Assignment and subrogation are expressly covered. A third party other than the original claimant who relies on a maritime claim by way of subrogation, assignment or otherwise is treated, for the purposes of the Convention, as having the same habitual residence or principal place of business as the original creditor. That matters for cargo insurers who have paid a claim and step into the cargo owner's shoes.

Whether a cargo claim justifies an arrest is a separate question from whether the carrier is liable at all. The notices, time bars and liability limits that govern cargo loss or damage claims in Morocco are explained in a separate guide.

The Convention allows a contracting State to withhold all or part of its benefits from non-contracting States and from persons without habitual residence or a principal place of business in a contracting State; how that option bears on a given application should be checked. Documentary formalities for a foreign applicant — proof of authority, form of mandate, translations or authentication — also depend on the file and should be settled for the specific application rather than assumed.

Fishing vessels are ships within the Maritime Code, and no general exclusion of fishing vessels from conservatory arrest appears in the texts discussed here. The general framework may therefore apply, subject to any specific rule relevant to the vessel and the claim; port police legislation, for example, contains its own provision on moving arrested Moroccan-flagged fishing vessels. Administrative disputes about fishing licences are a separate subject.

Vessels owned or operated by a State or a public body raise separate questions of immunity and of the protection of public property. Those situations call for specific analysis and are outside the scope of this guide.

The 1952 Convention does not create its own rule on liability for a wrongful arrest. It provides that questions about the claimant's liability for damage caused by the arrest, and for the costs of the security furnished to release or prevent it, are governed by the law of the State where the arrest was made or applied for.

In Morocco, Law 58.25 requires every litigant to exercise the right to litigate in good faith and allows a party to claim compensation for bad-faith litigation. An arrest can also be lifted where the applicant was not entitled to it. None of this means that every unsuccessful arrest gives rise to damages: liability depends on the facts and on what the court finds about the applicant's conduct.

A ship arrest is prepared under time pressure, often while the vessel is loading, bunkering or about to sail, and most of the decisions that determine whether it holds are taken before the application is filed. That is where a Moroccan lawyer's work is concentrated: turning a commercial claim into an application the competent judge can grant, in a form that survives the shipowner's response.

It helps to be precise about who does what. Counsel does not arrest or detain the ship. The arrest is authorised by the judge, and where the order provides for immobilisation, it is the competent authority of the place where the vessel lies that prevents departure once the order has been notified. Counsel's role is to obtain an order that says what the client needs, to make sure it is executed and notified in time, and to manage everything that follows — objection, security, release and the merits.

The same knowledge serves the other side. For a shipowner, operator or insurer, Moroccan maritime counsel reviews whether the arrest was properly obtained, responds within the objection period, and works toward release on terms that do not concede the claim. None of this guarantees an outcome: the judge decides on the application, on any objection and, failing agreement, on the security.

Most ship arrests in Morocco are international. The claimant may be abroad, the vessel may fly a foreign flag, the contract may be governed by foreign law, and the merits may belong to litigation or arbitration in another country. The Moroccan arrest is then one workstream within a wider matter, and it works best when the division of work is agreed at the start.

The usual split is straightforward. Foreign law firms, international maritime counsel or arbitration counsel manage the underlying dispute — the contract, the governing law, the forum and the merits. Local counsel in Morocco handles what has to be done before the Moroccan courts: the Moroccan application, the court filings, the execution and notification formalities, the objection stage, security and release before the Moroccan judge, and the Moroccan procedural deadlines.

The questions that decide whether an urgent arrest holds are practical ones: who holds the documents and in what form, which facts the Moroccan application will rely on, whether translations are needed, how the security requested or offered fits the forum where the merits will be decided, and how the period for commencing those proceedings will be met. Aligning the Moroccan and foreign teams on these points early is part of the work, not an afterthought.