Ali Lmrabet, a freelance French Moroccan journalist known for his critical reporting on the Moroccan authorities, was arrested on July 12, 2026, upon arriving at the Ibn Battuta airport in Tangier, in the north of Morocco, from Spain, where he resides.
Authorities investigated him on allegations of "disseminating false information" and "undermining constitutional institutions." Lmrabet was informed that he was the subject of multiple arrest warrants before being transferred to Casablanca for questioning by Morocco's National Brigade. On July 13, Lmrabet appeared before the prosecutor’s office, which ordered him held in pretrial detention, on July 15, 2026, the prosecutor’s officeordered his release.
Lmrabet, a journalist and blogger with over 200 thousand followers on Facebook and YouTube combined, has faced harassment for more than two decades because of his reporting and criticism of the Moroccan authorities. He founded the now-defunct French-language weekly Demain and its Arabic-language sister publication Doumane.
On May 21, 2003, a Rabat court convicted him of "insulting the king," "undermining the monarchy," and "challenging the territorial integrity of the state" over articles, interviews, cartoons, and satirical content published in the two weeklies, including coverage of the royal court's finances and Western Sahara. He was sentenced to four years in prison, later reduced on appeal to three years, fined 20,000 Moroccan dirhams(about US$2,000), and both publications were ordered closed. He was released on July 1, 2004, following a royal pardon.
In April 2005, he was convicted of defamation over comments concerning Sahrawis, an ethnic group from the contested Western Sahara, living in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria and was banned from practicing journalism in Morocco for 10 years, until April 2015. Since then, he has continued to report from Barcelona.
In July 2026, CPJ emailed the Moroccan Ministry of Interior, the French embassy in Rabat, and the office of the French prime minister for comment on Lmrabet’s arrest but did not receive a response.