(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned a court order seizing the earnings of the weekly “Le Journal Hebdomadaire”, saying it was clearly designed to put one of Morocco’s leading independent weeklies out of business. On 18 September 2004, the newspaper was told that its earnings and those of “Assahifa”, an Arabic-language weekly belonging to the same […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned a court order seizing the earnings of the weekly “Le Journal Hebdomadaire”, saying it was clearly designed to put one of Morocco’s leading independent weeklies out of business.
On 18 September 2004, the newspaper was told that its earnings and those of “Assahifa”, an Arabic-language weekly belonging to the same group, were to be seized as a result of a libel action brought by Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Benaïssa in 2001.
Benaïssa obtained a summary judgment ordering payment of 700,000 dirhams (approx. US$78,000; 63,000 euros) in damages, although the case is still pending before the Supreme Court.
RSF expressed concern that the threat to “Le Journal Hebdomadaire”‘s survival comes at a time when the monarchy is disturbed over the weekly’s critical reporting and its revelations about Hicham Mandari, a Moroccan citizen who was murdered in Spain in August 2004. Mandari had access to the palace under the late King Hassan II and had claimed to know state secrets.
“The only solution that would respect press freedom and at the same time show that Morocco’s judges are independent would be for the [higher appeals court] to point out the procedural shortcomings in the Appeals Court ruling and thereby overturn the seizure order that could put the newspaper out of business,” the organisation said.
Reached by telephone, “Le Journal Hebdomadaire” editor Ali Amar recalled that the authorities had originally banned his newspaper in December 2000, when it was called “Le Journal”. The weekly had reappeared three months later under its present name (see IFEX alerts of 11 January 2001 and 4 December 2000).
Since then, “the authorities have no longer dared attack us directly,” he told RSF. “Instead, they now always proceed in the same way. First, a smear campaign is orchestrated by the regime’s security agents in certain newspapers. Then the real problems begin: an exhaustive tax review or an advertising boycott. This time the authorities decided to revive a four-year-old libel suit in order to strangle us financially.”
Amar said the smear campaign against him and “Le Journal Hebdomadaire” began after the paper published an interview with Mandari in July 2003. A special issue entitled, “Five years without him”, which gave a critical assessment of the first five years of King Mohammed VI’s reign, also upset the authorities.
In the Benaïssa libel case, Amar and Aboubakr Jamaï, the newspaper’s managing editor, were originally fined 2 million dirhams (approx. US$223,000) in February 2001 and given a suspended prison sentence. The fine was reduced on appeal to 700,000 dirhams.
