Magazine publisher victim of legal harassment

Reporters Without Borders said today it would send a fact-finding mission to Morocco next week to investigate growing media repression there, including the legal harassment of Ali Lmrabet, publisher of the weekly magazines Demain and Douman and the organisation's correspondent in Morocco, after he published articles and cartoons criticising the royal household and government policy. "The authorities have increased their pressure on the independent media in recent weeks, with threats, harassment, summonses and legal action," said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general, Robert Ménard. "The government has used the international focus on Iraq to fall back into its old repressive ways and several journalists, significantly including Lmrabet, have been the victims. We are very concerned." Lmrabet was called in by police detectives on 1 April on the orders of a Rabat state prosecutor and interrogated for five hours about articles he had printed in recent months. These included reports on the king's civil list budget (an official finance ministry document distributed to members of parliament for approval), a cartoon about "the history of slavery" and a photo-montage featuring various politicians. Police asked Lmrabet if he was aware that he had called into question the "sanctity" of the country's institutions. He was also questioned about extracts from an interview (which first appeared in a Spanish daily paper, Avui) with an anti-royalist Moroccan figure, Abdallah Zaâzaâ, who called for the self-determination of the Saharawi people. The journalist was accused of "undermining the territorial integrity" of Morocco. Lmrabet told Reporters Without Borders he was quite surprised to be accused because the author of the remarks had not been troubled and it was not the first time such statements had been reported in the Moroccan media. He was summoned again on 9 April, by police in Rabat and a court in Casablanca at virtually the same time (though the two cities are 100 kms apart). He kept the appointment in Casablanca, where six complaints filed against him by journalists from the daily paper El Ahdath el Maghribia were heard. Forty complaints have been filed so far this year against Lmrabet by 40 of the paper's journalists because of a cartoon in Demain in 11 May last year that called the paper "pornographic." The plaintiffs deliberately filed their complaints in different places, obliging Lmrabet to report to at least half a dozen courts between 28 January and 5 June this year. "He has to be everywhere at once but he can't be convicted more than once for the same offence," said his lawyer, Ahmed Benjelloun. Lmrabet, who said the whole matter was "clearly political," was summoned again on 10 April by police in Rabat on the orders of the state prosecutor. He was asked the same questions as before by two officers. "Your answers are not good enough," said one. When Lmrabet asked him to write the remark in the official report on the questioning, the officer refused. The same day, in Settat (80 km south of Casablanca), Mohamed Bennouna Louridi, who writes for Douman, was physically attacked in the street by several people who accused him of writing an article that appeared the day before about the governor of the town.