(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has denounced the legal harassment of two Moroccan weekly newspaper editors. Mohammed el-Hourd, of “Asharq”, and Mustapha Kechnini, of “Al Hayat al-Maghribia” (“Moroccan Life”), were previously convicted under the country’s new press law, but they are being tried again for the same offences by a court in the northeastern city of Oujda, […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has denounced the legal harassment of two Moroccan weekly newspaper editors. Mohammed el-Hourd, of “Asharq”, and Mustapha Kechnini, of “Al Hayat al-Maghribia” (“Moroccan Life”), were previously convicted under the country’s new press law, but they are being tried again for the same offences by a court in the northeastern city of Oujda, where their respective newspapers are published. They have been summoned to appear in court on 19 October 2003
“King Mohammed VI has assured his people and [French] President Jacques Chirac that democracy will be encouraged, but the country’s courts are abusing legal principles such as not launching two separate trials for the same offence,” said Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general. “The king must remember that press freedom is an absolute condition for the democracy he talks about so much.”
On 4 August, a Rabat court sentenced El-Hourd to three years in prison for publishing a 5 June article by Islamic fundamentalist Zakkaria Boughrara, even though the piece’s author did not advocate hatred or call for violence. El-Hourd is being held at Salé prison, where journalist Ali Lmrabet is also serving a three-year sentence for “insulting the king” in articles and cartoons (see IFEX alerts of 17 October, 4 July, 18 and 10 June, 30, 26, 21, 16, 13 and 8 May, 18 and 16 April 2003).
Also on 4 August, Kechnini was sentenced to a year in jail and fined 5,000 dirhams (approx. US$535; 500 euros) for publishing the same Boughrara article in his paper’s 5 May issue. After spending one month in prison, he was provisionally released to await his appeal against the sentence before a Rabat court.
Kechnini, who has already been tried five times this year, was also summoned by the Oujda court for a 20 May article in his paper in which Hassan II (Mohammed VI’s father) was referred to as “the late king” instead of the standard term, “the late king, may God protect him with his divine mercy.” The prosecutor said this was “disrespectful” to the late monarch.
The same issue also triggered Kechnini’s prosecution for “attempting to undermine state security” because it carried an interview with a member of the Islamist organisation Al adl wall ihssan (Justice and Charity). Two of the paper’s journalists, Abdelaziz Jallouli and Miloud Trigui, have also been summoned in the case.
