Tunis — A Moroccan court has sentenced a prominent journalist to three years in prison on a dubious charge of failing to report a security threat, Human Rights Watch said today. Authorities have repeatedly prosecuted Hamid El Mahdaoui, known for criticizing the Moroccan government on social media, including for charges that violated his right to peaceful speech. He is already serving a one-year sentence for "inciting people to participate in an unauthorized protest."
On June 28, 2018, a Casablanca court of first instance sentenced El Mahdaoui to the prison term and a fine of 3,000 dirhams (US$315) based on a phone call he received from a man who said he intended to create armed strife in Morocco. The court did not accept Mahdaoui's main line of defense, which was that, as a well-known journalist, he repeatedly receives calls from strangers, and that he had concluded the caller's declarations were idle chatter that did not warrant alerting the authorities. The journalist has appealed the verdict.
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