Moroccan journalists charged for publishing secret government documents
New York, July 24, 2007—Two Moroccan journalists detained for more than a week were charged today with possessing classified documents after they recently published secret government papers regarding terrorist threats against Morocco. The Casablanca public prosecutor charged Abderrahim Ariri, publisher of the Moroccan weekly Al-Watan Al An and Mustafa Hormatallah, a journalist for the paper,…
The Moroccan Facade
Ahmed Reda Benchemsi, the 33-year-old publisher of the independent Moroccan weekly TelQuel, sensed someone was trying to send him a message. In a matter of months, two judges had ordered him to pay extraordinarily high damages in a pair of otherwise unremarkable defamation lawsuits.
Backsliders: The 10 countries where press freedom has most deteriorated
New York, May 2, 2007–Three nations in sub-Saharan Africa are among the places worldwide where press freedom has deteriorated the most over the last five years, a new analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists has found. Ethiopia, where the government launched a massive crackdown on the private press by shutting newspapers and jailing editors,…
Courts, press law undermine Moroccan press freedoms
Casablanca, Morocco, April 6, 2007—A delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists voiced concern today about a troubling pattern of punitive judicial sanctions that have threatened Morocco’s independent press. Over the last two years, Moroccan courts have levied stiff criminal penalties and civil damages against independent news publications, effectively banishing two of the country’s most…