Morocco: Rabat's war on terror targets media rights

Morocco: Rabat's war on terror targets media rights: "
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Morocco
Rabat's war on terror targets media rights

Security and free expression

Morocco's most controversial journalist, Ali Lmrabet, has spoken out against his three year prison sentence, handed down to him for 'offending the king, 'offending the monarchy' and 'attacking the country's territorial integrity'. James Badcock reports.

Ali Lmrabet, editor of the banned French-language satirical news weekly Demain and its Arabic equivalent Doumane, has become an international figure. He spent 50 days on hunger strike earlier this year in protest at his three year prison sentence.

Lmrabet lost a reported 22 kilos in weight and was hospitalised by his ordeal. But hopes that he might be released on humanitarian grounds to mark the fourth anniversary of the current king's accession on 1 August were dashed.

The Moroccan authorities are not inclined to relax their grip on the media. Days later editors Mohammed al-Herd and Abdel Majid Ben Taher, of the weekly newspaper al-Sharq, and Mustapha Qashnini, editor of the weekly al-Hayat al-Maghribiya, were jailed for violating Morocco's new anti-terrorism law.
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