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| Journalist Omar Radi in Casablanca, Morocco, 2018 |
Rabat, MOROCCO
Hundreds of people demonstrated last week
outside Morocco’s parliament demanding unconditionally
release and drop charges against a journalist jailed for a 9 months-old tweet
criticizing a judge, Human Rights Watch said today.
Omar Radi, 33, is due to be tried on January 2,
2020 for allegedly insulting a judge who imposed heavy penalties on protesters
from the Rif region.
He faces up to one year in prison if convicted.
On December
26, a judge in Casablanca rejected Radi’s request for pre-trial release,
notably on medical grounds that he suffers a severe form of asthma and other
ailments.
“Criticizing
officials is protected speech and no one should face prison time for peacefully
doing so,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North
Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
“Moroccan authorities should immediately free
Omar Radi and drop their case against him, which reeks of political vengeance
against his critical journalism and activism.”
Radi, an award-winning
investigative journalist, published several articles about the corruption of
officials, and collaborated with various international media as a local
correspondent or stringer. He is also a social and economic rights
activist who has been active in various nongovernmental organizations, notably
defending freedom of the press and land rights.
He was vice president of Attac Maroc, the local
branch of an anti-globalization organization that promotes civic action in
response to perceived excesses of global capitalism. He recently described to
the Committee to
Protect Journalists the “climate of pervasive surveillance and
harassment” faced by Moroccan journalists.
On April 6, Radi tweeted “Let
us all remember Appeals Judge Lahcen Tolfi, the enforcer against our brothers.
In many regimes, small-time henchmen like him come back begging, later,
claiming they were only ‘carrying out orders.’ No forgetting or forgiveness
with such undignified officials!”
Radi tweeted this minutes after an appeals
court, presided by Tolfi, upheld the trial court’s verdicts against the leaders
of largely peaceful protests in the Rif region, who were sentenced in June 2018
to up to 20 years in prison, largely based on statements that they said were
made under police
torture.
On April 16,
police in Casablanca summoned Radi and interrogated him for four hours about a series
of tweets he posted, criticizing a
magazine feature profiling Judge Tolfi that Radi found overly favourable.
The police did not contact Radi again until
December 25, when they sent him a new summons. When he reported the next
morning at 9 a.m., the police transported him to the office of a prosecutor in
the Ain Sebaa Court in Casablanca. At 1 p.m., the prosecutor began questioning
Radi in the company of his four lawyers.
One of them, Omar Bendjelloun, told Human
Rights Watch that the 30-minute session revolved solely around the single
April 6 tweet about Judge Tolfi.
At around 2 p.m., the prosecutor charged Radi
with “insulting a magistrate” under penal code article 263 and ordered his
detention and immediate referral to trial. He was taken to a cell in the
basement of the courthouse. His trial started at 6 p.m. Human Rights Watch
attended the trial session.
The defence
immediately requested a postponement of the case and Radi’s provisional
release. The prosecutor argued that detention was necessary because of unspecified
“exceptional circumstances” that he said surrounded Radi’s case.
The judge rejected the petition for provisional
release and ordered Radi’s transfer to Oukacha prison in Casablanca. The next
trial session is scheduled for January 2.
Article 263
of Morocco’s
penal code punishes with one month to one year in prison and a
fine to “whoever, with the intention of damaging their honor, their delicacy or
the respect due to their authority, shows contempt to … a magistrate.”
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