A Casablanca court Friday gave Taoufiq Bouachrine, the publisher of the Akhbar al-Youm newspaper, and cartoonist Khalid Gueddar three-year suspended jail sentences and ordered them to pay a colossal 270,000 euros in damages to Prince Moulay Ismaïl, a cousin of the king, for a cartoon of the prince published last month, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported.
The sentences were issued as a result of a suit brought by the prince accusing them of “failing to accord due respect to a member of the royal family.” The court imposed additional one-year suspended jail sentences and a fine of 9,000 euros in a parallel case brought by the interior ministry accusing them of “attacking an emblem of the kingdom.”
The court also ordered the newspaper’s “definitive closure.” The two journalists said they would appeal the verdicts in both cases.
“Despite our many protests, a demonstration outside the Moroccan embassy in Paris, a meeting with three advisers to the Moroccan ambassador to Paris, and a news conference in Casablanca attended by Bouachrine and Gueddar, we now have to express our deep disappointment about these verdicts, which sent a grim warning to the Moroccan press,” Paris-based RSF said.
