Spanish paper banned because of article by Ali Lmrabet as harassment of journalist continues

Reporters Without Borders said today it was shocked at the Moroccan government's ban on distribution of the 2 February issue of the Spanish daily El Mundo because it carried an article by dissident Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet. “The government will stop at nothing to shut Lmrabet up," the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “After jailing him, harassing him and forbidding him from working as a journalist, it now wants to dissuade the world's media from giving him a voice.” Without judging the content of the article, Reporters Without Borders called on the Moroccan authorities to stop banning El Mundo or any other Spanish publication and to drop the April 2005 ban on Lmrabet working as a journalist for 10 years. The Moroccan communications ministry forbade distribution of El Mundo, saying it contained an article by Lmrabet “who claims to be the paper's correspondent in Rabat." It said he was not accredited with the ministry as a correspondent. El Mundo said it had no obligation to register its correspondents with any ministry, in Morocco or elsewhere. Lmrabet told Reporters Without Borders that the article which caused the ban said King Mohamed VI had restricted the movements of his own mother because she had taken a lover. It quoted a former Moroccan intelligence officer. Lmrabet called the ban on the paper “grotesque” and said that “even the most repressive regimes that forbid local journalists from writing freely don't extend the ban to their articles published in other countries.”