Taking Evidence in Morocco for Foreign Proceedings: Letters of Request, Witnesses and Documents

Start with the point that changes everything else. A court order or subpoena issued in your own proceeding does not, on its own, reach a witness or a company inside Morocco: an order of a foreign court is not an exercise of authority on Moroccan territory. When the evidence you need — testimony, documents, an inspection — is physically in Morocco, the usual way to obtain it for a foreign case is through international judicial assistance, not by sending your own order across the border.

The route is treaty-first. You check whether a bilateral judicial-cooperation convention between your State and Morocco covers the taking of evidence; only where none applies do you turn to the 1970 Hague Evidence Convention, to which Morocco is a party. Then you decide whether the act you need requires formal judicial assistance and possible compulsion, or whether it can be done voluntarily.

This guide is for foreign lawyers, litigators and companies who need Moroccan evidence for a civil or commercial proceeding abroad. It explains the boundary a foreign order runs into, the treaty routes, what a letter of request achieves, how witnesses and documents are dealt with, and what you can and cannot do directly in Morocco. It is not a treatise on Moroccan evidence law, and it is a different subject from serving documents in Morocco.

This is the question that most often starts a matter, and the safe answer is precise. A subpoena or a document-production order issued abroad does not itself give the foreign court coercive authority over a person or company located in Morocco. Compulsion — obliging someone to attend, to answer or to produce — is an exercise of sovereignty on Moroccan soil, and it can be applied only by or through a Moroccan court, using the applicable judicial-assistance route and Moroccan procedure.

It helps to avoid the word "enforce" here, because enforcing a foreign subpoena is easily confused with the separate question of recognising and enforcing a foreign judgment (exequatur). They are not the same. A subpoena is not a judgment; the point is simply that a foreign evidentiary order does not carry its own compulsion into Morocco.

The practical consequence is the useful part. If the witness or company cooperates, some evidence may be gathered voluntarily. If they do not, and compulsion is needed, the real task is not to "serve a subpoena" in Morocco but to obtain Moroccan judicial assistance — which is what a letter of request, or commission rogatoire, is for.

Before drafting anything, identify the route, because it is treaty-specific and the order of checking matters. The sequence is: first, is there a bilateral judicial-cooperation convention between the foreign State and Morocco that covers the taking of evidence? If there is, it may govern — and it may take precedence over the Hague route in that relationship. Second, if no such bilateral convention applies, is the foreign State a party to the 1970 Hague Evidence Convention with Morocco? If so, the Hague framework is the route. Absent any treaty, the diplomatic channel is the fallback.

It is wrong to assume the Hague Convention automatically overrides a bilateral convention; the Convention itself preserves other conventions the States are party to. The reliable method is the one used for cross-border transmission generally: identify the foreign State, check for a bilateral convention first, and only then default to the Hague route. France is the clearest worked example, set out below, and precisely because it is the exception — a bilateral convention that prevails — it shows why the country-specific check comes first.

Only once the route is fixed do you decide the mechanism within it: whether the act needs formal judicial assistance with possible compulsion, or whether it can be taken voluntarily.

Where no bilateral convention governs, the reference instrument is the 1970 Hague Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters. Morocco has been a Contracting Party since 2011, the Convention entering into force for Morocco on 23 May 2011, and its Central Authority is the Ministry of Justice, Direction des Affaires Civiles. A translation of the request into Arabic or French is required.

The Convention offers two distinct mechanisms, and keeping them apart is essential because they differ exactly on the point that matters most — compulsion. Chapter I is the letter-of-request route through the Central Authority to a Moroccan court. Chapter II is evidence taken by diplomatic officers, consular agents or commissioners. What follows treats each in turn.

Under Chapter I, the foreign court issues a letter of request that is transmitted to the Moroccan Central Authority and executed by the competent Moroccan court according to Moroccan procedure. This is the route to use when the evidence may need to be compelled: where a measure of compulsion is available, it is applied by the Moroccan court, not by the foreign court or the foreign lawyer. Neither a foreign court nor foreign counsel has any coercive power of its own inside Morocco; the Moroccan court acts on the request.

Because a Moroccan court executes the measure under its own procedure, the request has to describe what is sought in terms that Moroccan procedure can actually carry out — the identity of the witness or document-holder, the questions or the specific documents, and the nature of the case. A request framed as open-ended foreign-style discovery is unlikely to translate well into this route.

Chapter II allows evidence to be taken by diplomatic officers, consular agents or specially appointed commissioners within the accepted framework. The decisive feature is that this evidence is taken voluntarily and without any means of compulsion: a person who does not agree cannot be obliged to attend or answer under this route, and a consular agent typically hears only the sending State's own nationals.

This route can suit a cooperative witness, but it is not a substitute for compulsion. The precise authorisation conditions attaching to a commissioner are a matter to confirm for the specific situation rather than to assume; what is safe to hold onto is the core rule — Chapter II is voluntary, and anything requiring compulsion belongs to the Chapter I letter-of-request route.

A letter of request — in civil-law terms a commission rogatoire — is the instrument by which one court asks the competent authority of another State to carry out an evidentiary act on its behalf. For evidence located in Morocco, it is the formal way a foreign proceeding reaches a Moroccan court, which then takes the evidence under Moroccan procedure and returns the result through the applicable channel.

Under the current Moroccan Code de procédure civile (Law 58-25, in force since 24 August 2026), international letters of request are dealt with within the Code's provisions on commissions rogatoires, which cover both requests sent abroad by Moroccan courts and requests coming from a foreign authority to be executed in Morocco. The governing idea is stable and long-standing: a foreign letter of request is executed by the competent Moroccan court broadly as a domestic measure would be, according to Moroccan law. Because the reform is recent, this guide describes the mechanism rather than citing a specific current article number, which should be confirmed against the official consolidated text before being relied on.

The channel by which the request travels depends on the route: under a bilateral convention it may go directly to the competent public prosecutor (as with France, below); under the Hague route it goes to the Central Authority; absent a treaty, the diplomatic channel applies. The instrument is the same idea throughout — a request from a foreign court, executed by a Moroccan court.

Where a witness is examined under a letter of request, the Moroccan court conducts the examination under its own procedure. In broad terms that means the witness is heard by the court, an interpreter is used where needed, and a formal record of the testimony is made and returned through the applicable channel. The questions the foreign court wishes to put can be conveyed with the request, and are dealt with within Moroccan procedure rather than by foreign counsel directly conducting the examination.

Compelled attendance is possible, but only through the competent Moroccan authority — never on the strength of a foreign order alone. Whether foreign counsel may attend, and in what capacity, depends on what the executing court permits and should be raised in advance rather than assumed. This guide does not set out a video-link or remote-testimony procedure; whether any such arrangement is available is a question to confirm for the specific court and case, not something to promise in advance.

A foreign discovery or production order does not, by itself, create an obligation on a person or company in Morocco to hand documents over. Where the documents are held by someone who will not produce them voluntarily and compulsion is needed, that again runs through judicial assistance and a Moroccan court, not through the foreign order.

Two features shape what is realistic. First, broad common-law-style pre-trial discovery — wide, open-ended requests, or "fishing" for whatever might exist — is not a feature of Moroccan civil procedure; a request is far more workable when it identifies specific, described documents. Second, production runs into real limits: professional secrecy, banking secrecy, trade secrets, third-party confidentiality, and the protection of personal data under Moroccan law. Those limits are noted here as boundaries to plan around, not as a separate body of advice; this guide is about obtaining evidence, not a data-protection manual.

This deserves a careful answer rather than a slogan, because the honest position sits between two wrong extremes. It is not accurate to say that a foreign lawyer may freely conduct a home-style deposition in Morocco as of right; nor is it accurate to state, as a flat universal, that depositions are simply prohibited. What is true is that compulsion and formal judicial evidence-taking are matters for the Moroccan court through the judicial-assistance route, while a genuinely voluntary interview of a willing person is a different thing.

So the path depends on what you actually need. A willing witness may be interviewed voluntarily as a factual matter; a formal, compelled or oath-bound examination for use before the foreign court belongs to the letter-of-request route and the Moroccan court; and a consular or commissioner examination under Chapter II remains voluntary and, for a consul, usually limited to the sending State's nationals. The safe course is to define the evidentiary act first, then choose the route — not to assume home practice travels unchanged.

Keeping three levels distinct prevents most missteps. A voluntary private interview of a willing person involves no oath, no compulsion and no Moroccan court; it is information-gathering, and whether its product is admissible in the foreign proceeding is a question for the foreign court, not something Moroccan law guarantees. Consular or commissioner evidence under Chapter II is also voluntary, with no compulsion and, for consuls, generally limited to the sending State's own nationals. Compelled or formal judicial evidence — attendance obliged, oath administered, a formal record taken — is available only through a Moroccan court executing a letter of request.

The distinction is not academic: choosing a voluntary route for something that in fact needs compulsion, or assuming a private interview will be treated abroad as formal testimony, is where cross-border evidence plans go wrong. Decide which level the case requires before deciding how to proceed.

For the Hague route, a letter of request must be accompanied by a translation into Arabic or French — so it is wrong to say, as a blanket rule, that everything must be translated into Arabic. Under a bilateral convention the position can differ, and the language and formalities are those of the specific route.

The safe approach is therefore to treat the language and translation requirement as route-specific: confirm what the applicable channel requires before sending, and budget for a certified translation where one is needed. It is equally wrong to assume French is automatically accepted under every bilateral convention, or that any single formula covers all cases.

The grounds on which a request may be refused or limited are narrow and principled rather than open-ended. A request may be declined where it falls outside the competence of the Moroccan authorities, or where executing it would compromise the sovereignty, security or public order of the Kingdom. A requested measure that Moroccan procedure does not provide for, or an act incompatible with it, can also be a limit, as can protected confidentiality or professional secrecy.

Framed the other way round, most well-formed requests that respect Moroccan procedure and stay within these boundaries can be executed. The point of naming the limits is not to intimidate but to shape the request: keep it specific, judicial in character, and compatible with what a Moroccan court can actually do.

Where evidence touches confidential material, professional secrecy is the relevant Moroccan concept — secret professionnel — and it is worth using that term deliberately rather than importing a foreign label. In particular, common-law "attorney–client privilege" does not map automatically onto Moroccan law as an identical concept; if privilege matters to your case, it should be analysed in Moroccan terms rather than assumed to carry across.

Alongside professional secrecy, the protection of personal data and other confidentiality interests can bear on what may be produced or disclosed. These are limits to anticipate when framing a request, not a separate service this guide provides; the practical takeaway is that confidentiality and secrecy questions are best identified early, in Moroccan terms, so they do not derail a request later.

France is the clearest illustration of why the country-specific check comes before the Hague default. France and Morocco are bound by the Convention on mutual judicial assistance, exequatur of judgments and extradition of 5 October 1957, whose provisions on the taking of evidence govern between the two States and take precedence over the 1970 Hague Convention in that relationship — the Hague Convention expressly preserving such prior conventions.

In practical terms, and according to the French Ministry of Justice's guidance, a commission rogatoire for evidence is transmitted by the issuing court's registry directly to the competent Moroccan public prosecutor (the parquet) of the place where the evidence is to be taken, together with a translation, rather than through the Hague Central Authority; a consular examination, by contrast, is available only for the sending State's own nationals.

The essential lesson is the one to carry to every other country: this route is specific to France. It cannot be assumed for Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States or anywhere else. Each State requires its own treaty check, and only then the Hague default.

It is worth stating plainly, because the two are constantly confused: taking evidence is not the same as serving documents. Service means notifying or delivering a judicial or extrajudicial document to someone in Morocco; taking evidence means obtaining testimony, documents or other proof located in Morocco. They travel different routes and, even where the same bilateral convention contains both, they sit in different parts of it. If your task is to notify a document rather than to gather proof, that is the subject of our guide to serving foreign judicial documents in Morocco.

A letter of request is also distinct from recognising a foreign judgment. Gathering evidence in Morocco may support a case that later produces a judgment, but making that judgment effective in Morocco is a separate stage — the subject of our guide to the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in Morocco. Evidence-gathering, service and enforcement are three different things and should not be run together.

The value of Moroccan counsel here is practical and specific. It begins with identifying the applicable instrument — bilateral convention or the Hague route — and the correct Moroccan authority or court, then reading the foreign letter of request and assessing whether the act it seeks can actually be carried out under Moroccan procedure, and how it should be framed to be executable.

From there the work is the substance of the request: organising certified translations, preparing any Moroccan-side filing, addressing witness or document issues, and handling objections, professional secrecy and confidentiality as they arise — representing an interested party before the executing court where that is permitted, and attending the evidence-taking where allowed. It closes with reporting the result back to foreign counsel and, where relevant, connecting the evidence to a related step such as a later commercial matter or enforcement. Throughout, the lawyer is distinct from the Moroccan court, the Central Authority, the foreign judge and the witness; the lawyer prepares, coordinates and represents, but does not decide the request or compel anyone.

Where a client is already advised abroad, the foreign lawyer or firm usually keeps the international matter and the relationship, while the Moroccan-law workstream is handled by counsel who can act before the Moroccan courts. A realistic sequence looks like this: foreign counsel identifies the evidence needed in Morocco and defines the evidentiary act; the two sides settle whether it is voluntary or requires compulsion; the treaty route is selected; the request is adapted to Moroccan procedural requirements and translated; it reaches the competent Moroccan authority; the evidence is taken under Moroccan procedure; and the result is coordinated back into the foreign proceeding.

It is worth being honest that this is a multi-step process and not a guaranteed linear administrative one — timing and outcome depend on the route, the measure and the competent authority. What foreign counsel most often needs early is a clear read of which route applies and what the chosen route actually requires, so the request is built correctly the first time.