Government asked to explain police attack on Al-Jazeera's Rabat correspondent

Reporters Without Borders wrote to Moroccan interior minister Chakib Benmoussa today asking why Al-Jazeera correspondent Hassan Fatih and his TV crew were beaten by police yesterday in Rabat while covering a sit-in by the relatives of 68 Islamist prisoners who are on hunger strike. “We have highlighted the progress made in recent months in Morocco as regards press freedom and now this attack unfortunately shows that violence against journalists persists,” the letter said. “This situation worries us.” Fatih, who said he planned to make a complaint, gave Reporters Without Borders this account of the incident: “We were covering the sit-in by the relatives of the detainees outside the justice ministry when the security forces asked us to leave the demonstration without giving any explanation. When we insisting on filming the demonstration, some police officers intervened in a very violent fashion. We succeeded in preventing one policeman from grabbing the videotape and smashing our camera. It is not the first time the police have tried to attack us. I was injured in the neck and shoulder.” Fatih was taken to hospital to have his injuries X-rayed and was given 20 days of off work. Aged 40 and a Moroccan citizen, he began his career in TV journalism working for the national public broadcaster RTM. He became the Rabat correspondent of NBC and then of Al-Arabiya before joining the Qatar-based satellite news broadcaster Al-Jazeera. The Moroccan National Press Union has called on the authorities “to protect journalists and to put a stop to the repeated attacks against them.”