Report on Media in Morocco - Arab Center for the Rule of Law and ...

500,000.000 Dirhams. The nature of these judgments gave the impression that
political motives were behind them and not just to do justice to the plaintiffs 45 .
Because it published a file on "Women of the Royal Palace Among Three Kings", the
director of the weekly "al-Ayyam" (Days) and a journalist working at the weekly were
sentenced to four years in prison with stay of execution and a fine of 200,000 Dirhams
each. The same weekly was charged with a fine that reached 120,000 Dirhams in
another case, before being doubled during the appeal stage.
Lawsuits did not stop there. "Le Journal" magazine was once again, through its
publishing director, Abu Bakr al-Jamie, and editor-in-chief, Fahd al-Iraqi, subject to a
judgment that set a new record in terms of the fine's value (3 million Dirhams),
following the doubts raised by the magazine about the scientific integrity of a report
on the Polissario Front prepared by a European center. During the same period, the
weekly "al-Masha'al" (The Torch) was convicted in a case related to defamation
against a foreign head of state (Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bou Tafleeqa). The
director of the weekly "al-Baydawi" was interrogated after publishing a headline on
the front page of his newspaper, saying: "Damn this country!", in an attempt to
express the rage of part of the Moroccans vis-à-vis their country. He was convicted
although the newspaper's owner solved the problem and changed the headline before
the newspaper was distributed. The director of "Le Journal" magazine and the weekly
"al-Masha'al" were also interrogated about the same subject for republishing the
cover of "al-Baydawi".
In the case of "Monarchy is not suitable for Morocco", in which the accused is the
director of the "al-Osbooiyyah al-Jadidah" (New Weekly) newspaper and two of its
journalists, as well as the reporter who conducted the interview that angered the
authorities 46 , the court has not pronounced its judgment yet.
The interesting point in the pressures that newspapers were subject to during this
period is what happened to "Le Journal" magazine, when some "associations" staged a
protest before its headquarters, claiming that the magazine republished the caricatures
that insulted the dignified Prophet (Peace be upon him). What drew the attention in
this protest and rendered it a clear attempt to impose constraints on the magazine and
its editorial orientation and to settle accounts with it is that, on one hand, such protest
was not organized before the newspapers which really republished those caricatures
(Moroccan daily "An-Nahar"), but before "Le Journal" which only published a very
small photo of a person carrying the French "Le Soir" newspaper that included those
caricatures before deleting them under print. On another hand, the State's involvement
in the organization of the protest was confirmed. This was revealed by the attendance
of some deputies in Casablanca and the transportation of people by buses that belong
45 In the first case, the magazine was sued by parliamentarian Halima al-Assali, who considered that
she was subject to libel. In the second one, it was sued by Thuraya al-Jaaydi, the head of an association
and the wife of a senior official of the Ministry of Interior under the term of Idris al-Basri. She
considered that the information published about her management of the mentioned association as false.
46 Nadia Yasseen, the daughter of the leader of the unrecognized "Justice and Charity" group, stated in
the said story that the "monarchy was not suitable for Morocco", considering that it was about to
collapse.