RABAT, Jun 10, 2010 (AFP) - A Moroccan court on Thursday sentenced a prominent journalist to six months in jail for fraud relating to a property deal, a judicial source said.
The prison term handed down to Taoufik Bouachrine comes nearly eight months after he was given a four-year suspended sentence over a cartoon deemed offensive to Morocco's royal family.
The latest case concerned a villa that Bouachrine bought in Rabat three years ago. The former owner lodged a complaint againt in April saying that he had failed to honour the agreed price.
"This business has been judged twice. I won it in the civil courts the first time and they have just sentenced me to prison in the crminal courts. I have been sentenced as a journalist, not a normal citizen," Bouachrine said in a statement to AFP.
The judge did not order the immediate imprisonment of Bouachrine, the former director of the Akhbar Al Youm newspaper.
"We have decided to appeal. The judgment has no legal basis. I don't understand it," said Bouachrine's lawyer, Abdellatif Wahbi.
At the end of October last year Bouachrine and Akhbar Al Youm cartoonist Khalid Gueddar were each given suspended jail sentences following two separate trials over the cartoon, depicting a royal wedding.
Separately, New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Moroccan authorities Thursday of harassing two journalists, Ali Amar and Zineb El Rhazoui, for political reasons.
Amar appeared in court in Casablanca on Thursday accused by a colleague of stealing a computer. His case was adjourned until June 15 after the defence asked for time to prepare his case.
Human Rights Watch said police broke down the door of El Rhazoui's apartment on June 4 and searched it without permission, before detaining her and Amar for 12 hours. Amar was rearrested on June 7.
"The police have pounced on a business dispute to harass and humiliate two bold journalists," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa director.
The group said the two journalists both worked for the weekly newspaper Le Journal Hebdomadaire before it closed in January. Amar is also the author of a critical account of the rule of King Mohammed VI that was published in France in 2009 but banned in Morocco.
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Copyright AFP 2010.
