Moroccan Journalist Gets 10-Year Ban

RABAT, 13 April 2005 — A leading Moroccan journalist and strong critic of the monarchy was fined and banned from journalism for 10 years yesterday over an article he wrote on the disputed Western Sahara territory.

Ali Lmrabet was ordered to pay a 50,000 dirhams ($5,840) by a Rabat court for defaming a little-known association based in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara.

Morocco seized Western Sahara in 1975, immediately after it won independence from colonial power Spain. The desert territory’s independence movement, the Polisario Front, is based in Tindouf in Algeria where some 150,000 refugees live in camps.

“What did I do to deserve this? Is it because I said the Saharans in Tindouf are not prisoners but refugees?” Lmrabet told Reuters.