Archive for the ‘Morocco’ Category Category RSS

Morocco: Blogger Arrested, Sentenced Immediately

This morning, it was reported by the electronic news site Hespress [ar] that blogger Mohammed Raji was arrested in his home in Agadir. An article that Raji had posted on Hespress [ar] is said to be the source of the conflict, though neither that fact nor Raji's arrest have been confirmed outside of the blogosphere. This afternoon it was reported that Raji had already been tried and sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of MAD 5,000.

Morocco: Fouad Mourtada free

Fouad Mourtada, the 26-year old IT engineer who has been arrested on February 5th, 2008 and sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of $1350 for creating a fake Facebook profile of King Mohammed VI’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, has been released about an hour ago. According ...

Morocco: Fouad Mourtada Update

Fouad Mourtada probably never guessed he’d become a household name. Arrested on February 5 and sentenced on February 22 to three years in prison (plus a $1,000 fine) for creating a Facebook profile impersonating Morocco’s Prince Moulay Rachid, Mourtada is now famous, but unfortunately, that fame has come at an ...

Morocco: No Justice for Fouad Mourtada

Is creating a Facebook profile of a famous entity a crime? Although it's been done to nearly every major celebrity (a quick search for "George W. Bush" garners over 500 results), when Fouad Mourtada chose to mimic Prince Moulay Rachid of Morocco, he was committing a serious crime. As Sami ...

Morocco: Facebook's fake prince could face five years in prison

On February 22, Fouad Mourtada was sentence to three years in prison and a fine of (10,000 dirhams) $1350.

Morocco: Censorship Update

2006 was a rough year for Moroccan internet freedoms, with several sites being blocked; 2007 wasn't much better with sites that were previously open becoming only sporadically accessible. Moi, dans tous mes états (fr) summarized freedom of internet (as well as other forms of media) in a recent post: A l’heure des ...

Morocco: Stop Internet Censorship!

In March of 2006, Livejournal, the popular blogging site, was blocked by the state-controlled telecommunications provider Maroc Telecom (a subsidiary of Vivendi International), depriving Moroccan citizens of access to the roughly 2 million blogs the service hosts. On May 25, 2007, Maroc Telecom blocked access to YouTube for few days. ...