Weekly ordered to pay heavy damages in continuing court harassment

Reporters Without Borders condemned the continuing judicial harassment of the Moroccan weekly TelQuel after a Casablanca court today ruled on appeal that it must pay 500,000 dirhams (50,000 euros) in damages in a libel suit brought by the director of a child aid association, Touria Bouabid. “It is now clear that the Moroccan courts want to strangle TelQuel financially, as it was already ordered to pay an equally disproportionate fine a little more than a month ago,” the press freedom organisation said. “The appeal court did, it is true, reduce the amount of damages awarded by the lower court but it is still exorbitant and more than five times the maximum damages mentioned in the press code for defamation cases,” Reporters Without Borders added. TelQuel's lawyer said the newspaper would appeal to a yet higher court. A lower court in Casablanca ruled on 25 October that TelQuel should pay a fine of 10.000 dirhams (915 euros) and damages of 900,000 dirhams (82,300 euros) for a report in May that Bouabid had been summoned by the police for questioning about embezzlement within her NGO. The information came from police sources and was reported in three other newspapers as well as TelQuel - Al Ahdath Al Maghribiya, Al Ayam and Al Ousbouîya Al Jadida. All four newspapers published retractions after the information turned out to be false, and the other three got off with minor fines. On 29 December, the Casablanca appeal court ordered TelQuel to pay 800,000 dirhams (72,000 euros) in a separate libel case.