(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has urged the authorities to explain why they are holding four journalists who were originally detained under an anti-terrorism law, but reportedly will now be prosecuted under the press law and face prison terms. Three of the journalists are to appear before an investigating judge in Rabat on 27 June 2003. They […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has urged the authorities to explain why they are holding four journalists who were originally detained under an anti-terrorism law, but reportedly will now be prosecuted under the press law and face prison terms.
Three of the journalists are to appear before an investigating judge in Rabat on 27 June 2003. They are Mustapha Kechnini, publisher of the Oujda-based weekly “Al Hayat al Maghribia”, Mohammed el Hourd, publisher of the Oujda-based weekly “Asharq”, and Abdelmajid Ben Tahar, “Asharq”‘s editor. The fourth journalist, Mustapha Alaoui, managing editor of the weekly “Al Ousboue”, appeared before a judge on 25 June.
“We call on Justice Minister Mohamed Bouzoubaâ to clarify the charges against these journalists, and we would like to know exactly what they are supposed to have done,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said. “If the fight against terrorism is to be a legitimate one, it must not violate freedoms and the freedom of expression in particular,” Ménard added, calling for the journalists’ immediate release.
RSF pointed out that, in January 2000, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Abid Hussain, called on all governments “to ensure that press crimes are no longer subject to prison sentences except for crimes such as racist or discriminatory comments or appeals for violence.” The imposition of a prison sentence for the peaceful expression of opinion “constitutes a serious violation of human rights,” Hussain said.
At the first hearing in Alaoui’s trial on 25 June, the judge denied a request for his provisional release, although the 67-year-old editor had to be rushed to Avicenne hospital in Rabat with a diabetic attack two days after his 5 June arrest. He was detained for publishing a letter from a hitherto unknown group claiming responsibility for three of the five bombings in Casablanca on 16 May. The prosecutor’s office said the letter’s publication was “a flagrant violation of criminal law provisions, especially those in the law on the struggle against terrorism.”
Kechnini, Hourd and Ben Tahar were detained on 13 June on the orders of the state prosecutor and are currently held in Salé prison in Rabat. Kechnini was arrested because the 5 May issue (No. 118) of his newspaper contained an article by an Islamist, Zakkaria Boughara, praising the “jihad movement” in Morocco. Hourd and Ben Tahar were detained over the same article, which they published in their newspaper on 5 June.
The Rabat appeals court prosecutor originally said that Kechnini, Hourd and Ben Tahar – as well as the article’s author Boughara – were among those detained in the investigation into the 16 May bombings. However, it appears that the journalists are now being prosecuted under Articles 38 and 39 of the press law, which provide for prison sentences of one to three years.