A Moroccan youngster, aged 18, has been jailed for insulting the king, after replacing the monarch's name with that of his favourite football club.

He altered the phrase God, The Nation, The King on the school blackboard to read God, The Nation, Barcelona.

FC Barcelona says it has appointed a lawyer to look into whether they can help the boy, within the framework of Moroccan law.

The family of the boy, Yassine Belassal, is appealing against the ruling, and his father told the BBC he was preparing to write a letter to King Mohamed VI asking for a royal pardon.

An internet campaign is also under way to have Belassel freed.

Update: Unappealing Result

13th November 2008. Based on article from amnesty.org

The Marrakesh Court of Appeals in Morocco has upheld a lower court's guilty verdict against an 18-year-old student for insulting the King. Yassin Bellasal was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison term and a fine of 1,000 dirhams (approximately US$115).

Amnesty International said that the verdict serves to confirm that the monarchy remains a taboo topic in Morocco and shed a different light on the image projected by the Moroccan authorities of a state, where respect for human rights has greatly improved.

Two Moroccan magazines have been banned for publishing an opinion poll of the King in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of his rule.

All issues of Arabic-language weekly magazine Nichane and its French-language sister publication Telquel were seized by the Interior Ministry.

The Interior Ministry ordered the seizure of the issues of Telquel and Nichane following the printing of articles that violate the law, the ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The seized issue of Telquel featured King Mohammed VI on its cover with the words The People Judge Their King emblazoned on his image.

The magazine conducted an opinion poll asking readers what they thought of the last ten years of King Mohammed VI’s rule, and the results were overwhelmingly positive.

The poll showed that 91% of Moroccans are satisfied or very satisfied with the king’s performance.

An editor of Telquel told French media that authorities told the magazine it was unacceptable in principle”to publish an opinion poll about the king, which is why the issues were seized.

Rights organization Reporters Without Borders said that while there have been significant improvements in press freedom in the past ten years, extreme censorship is still prevalent.  In the past ten years, according to the organization, Moroccan journalists have been sentenced to a total of 25 years in jail and news organizations have been fined a total of 2.8 million dollars.

The fundamental problem is this, a popular blogger Larbi wrote: In Morocco the king governs, he is the head of state, and the chief executive. But at the same time he is a sacred person. So whoever wants to talk about Moroccan politics finds himself in this dilemma: how do you speak about the actions of a head of state that presides over the destiny of 30 million Moroccans when the law punishes those who speak of, and violate his sacredness?

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the closure of a Moroccan independent daily amid an escalating government campaign to silence critical journalists.

On Tuesday, police prevented Taoufik Bouachrine, managing publisher and editor of the daily Akhbar al-Youm, and dozens of staff members from entering the offices of the Casablanca-based newspaper.

The sudden move followed a statement from the Ministry of the Interior accusing the independent daily of blatant disrespect to a member of the royal family for publishing in its September 26-27 weekend edition a cartoon on a strictly private wedding ceremony organized by the royal family. Prince Moulay Ismail, the cousin of King Mohamed VI, was married in a ceremony that, though private, had generated considerable interest and coverage in local newspapers.

Police detained and interrogated Bouachrine and cartoonist Khaled Kadar for more than 24 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday in Casablanca, lawyers told CPJ. Lawyers told CPJ that the allegations against Akhbar al-Youm are groundless and that the Ministry of the Interior has no legal authority to shutter a newspaper unilaterally. Article 77 of the Moroccan Press Law goes only so far as to authorize the ministry to ban a single issue of a periodical deemed disrespectful to the royal family.

We urge King Mohamed VI to order an immediate end to the arbitrary siege of Akhbar al-Youm and to immediately back the right of our colleagues to do their job without police or judicial harassment, said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. The time has come for a regime that constantly pays lip service to democracy to turn the page on abusing the law to settle scores with critical journalists.

Blatant disrespect to a member of the royal family

Based on article from map.ma

The cartoon, published September 26-27, 2009 by the daily, is a blatant disrespect to a member of the royal family, said a statement by the Ministry on Monday.

In addition to tendentiously using the national flag, the cartoon undermines a symbol of the Nation by insulting the emblem of the Kingdom, the statement said, adding that the use of the Star of David in the cartoon raises many questions on the insinuations of the people behind it and suggests flagrant anti-Semitic penchants.

In light of the elements at hand, the Interior Minister has decided, in accordance with the laws in force, to sue and seize the daily, and to take the appropriate measures concerning the paper's equipment and premises, the document said.

In the same vein, Prince Moulay Ismail has decided to take legal action concerning this issue.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns the decision of a Rabat court to imprison the managing editor of Al-Michaal newspaper for one year.

A Rabat misdemeanor court sentenced Driss Chahtan to a year in jail and Al-Michaal journalists Mostafa Hiran and Rashid Mahameed to three months in prison and a 5,000 dirham (US$655) fine each for intentionally publishing false information in a number of articles about King Mohamed VI's health, local journalists told CPJ.

The paper's lawyers walked out of the hearing on October 8 to protest procedural violations and the court's failure to abide by basic standards for a fair trial, they said.

Immediately after the court ruling, around two dozen policemen stormed the Casablanca-based offices of Al-Michaal and arrested Chahtan, journalists told CPJ. Lahbib Mohamed Haji, one of the newspaper's lawyers told CPJ that the arrest violated the country's penal code, saying that the public prosecutor had no legal basis to request the imprisonment after the court issued its decision.

Haji said he has appealed the ruling. Neither Hiran nor Mahameed have been detained.

These jail terms are part of a disturbing trend of repression of critical journalism in Morocco, said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. The government has failed to keep its repeated promise to reform restrictive press legislation and a politicized judiciary. We call on the appeals court to overturn these convictions. Meanwhile our colleague should be released on bail.

Update: Banned

21st November 2009. See article from indexoncensorship.org

Moroccan newspaper Al-Michaal was banned on 13 November after editor in chief Driss Chahtan was sentenced to one year in prison and a 10,000 dirham fine as punishment for his articles about the health of King Mohamed VI.

On Sept. 28, 2009, the government ordered Akbar el Youm silenced, shuttered its offices in Casablanca, and posted policemen at its entrance to prevent any of the newspaper's 70 employees from reaching their desks.

The reason? This cartoon by Khalid Gueddar, published on Sept. 26:

It's Moulay Ismail on his nuptial truss, says the line in Arabic. Moulay Ismail is a cousin of Mohammed VI. He got married to a German woman recently. The faintly Hitlerean pose of the cartoon is gratuitous and vulgar. The Moroccan ministry of the interior didn't like the cartoon. It called it anti-Semitic for the way it portrayed the Moroccan star apparently as a Star of David.

The ministry then displayed its own anti-Semitism when it charged that the depiction of the national star as a Star of David was an outrage to the flag. The cartoon, the ministry charged, also lacked respect for the royal family--which, in Morocco, must be respected more than humor, truth or justice, as the cartoon case proved: Khaled Gueddar and his editor, Toufik Bouachrine, now face three to five years in prison. Moulay Ismail, the nuptialized prince, is claiming $400,000 in damages.

Morocco blocked distribution of an edition of leading Spanish daily newspaper El Pais after it reprinted cartoons deemed disrespectful to the royal family, the newspaper said. Morocco also blocked distribution of editions of the French newspaper Le Monde over the cartoons.

Moroccan authorities accused the newspapers of attacking the monarchy with the publication of the cartoons.

One of the cartoons is by Le Monde's star cartoonist Plantu and it depicts a hand reaching out of a Moroccan flag to create a child-like drawing of a funny face wearing a crown.

The other is by Moroccan caricaturist Khalid Gueddar and it alludes to the 25 September wedding of Prince Moulay Ismail, a cousin of King Mohammed VI, to a German convert to Islam.

The Federation of Journalist Associations in Spain said it deplored the distribution ban slapped on El Pais, saying in a statement it was regrettable that the Moroccan ministry of communication had opted for censorship.

The closure of the daring magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire is a sign of renewed authoritarianism in Morocco

Last Thursday, I learned from the man behind Le Journal, Abou Bakr Jamai, that bailiffs had come to the magazine's office, just as its journalists were putting the final touches on a new issue, to seize its assets. A series of crippling libel fines and debts to the tax authorities had driven it to bankruptcy. We can already officially announce the death of Le Journal, Jamai told me. I was shaken to learn that no more issues of Le Journal would appear, although not surprised. It had become clear for several years that the palace – whether the king himself or his coterie of advisers – had given up on trying to co-opt or intimidate the magazine, as it has done with many other publications, and would sooner or later succeed in pushing it into oblivion by economic means.

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