Happiness mixed with sadness for freed blogger.

"The ruling today showed the situation of human rights has changed in Morocco and there is improvement in court dealings with cases related to rights of opinion and free press" Erraji's lawyer

There was relief in the media and blogging communities with the news that a Moroccan appeals court on Thursday cancelled the two-year jail sentence given to Mohamed Errajia for disparaging King Mohammed and the royal family. Last week, the blogger was jailed and fined 5,000 dirhams. He was later released on bail pending the appeals court ruling.

Erraji's "crime' was that he wrote in online newspaper, Hespress, that Morocco had been destroyed by the practice of handing out charity or gifts such as taxi licences to a lucky few, which encouraged people to beg.

From New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed a Moroccan court decision. On Monday the Committee had sent a letter to King Mohamed VI urging him to ensure that the court of appeal would overturn the sentence.

“I am very happy with today’s court ruling, which came after a summary and unfair ruling,” Erraji told CPJ. “But at the same time, my happiness is mixed with feelings of sadness, because it never occurred to me that one day I would be arbitrarily accused of showing disrespect toward the king, which is a grave accusation.”

Ahmed Belouch, presiding judge at the appeals court in the southern city of Agadir is reported as saying, "The case is not acceptable and the case was abandoned and thrown out of court." Judge Belouch cited flaws in prosecuting the case of the 29-year-old blogger, including the failure to summon him to attend trial 15 days before he actually appeared in court and his unlawful detention ahead of the trial. Erraji had no defence lawyer.

"The ruling today showed the situation of human rights has changed in Morocco and there is improvement in court dealings with cases related to rights of opinion and free press," said Abdellatif Ouammou, who was Erraji lawyer.

As we pointed out in an earlier story, Morocco is far from alone in prosecuting such cases. An American blogger has been sentenced to three months in jail for accusing a Singapore judge of "prostituting herself".

Gopalan Nair, 58, said he planned to appeal.

An official with the Supreme Court did not provide details but confirmed the sentence, which was issued Wednesday.

Local newspapers said Nair was given until Saturday to settle his affairs before he is taken to prison.

"I'm going to serve the sentence," Nair said, adding he has no regrets. "I only wrote a blog. I didn't go out and kill anybody."

In his blog, Nair had criticised a legal hearing at which Singapore founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, testified in a defamation case they filed against an opposition party.

Nair was charged with insulting Justice Belinda Ang Saw Ean by saying she was "prostituting herself during the entire proceedings, by being nothing more than an employee of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his son and carrying out their orders," a court document said.

Earlier story: Not Just a Moroccan Issue


Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news