Rif24 | Imprisoned in Morocco | June 06, 2017

Job:Internet Reporter, Producer, Publisher/Owner
Medium:Documentary Film, Internet
Beats Covered:Corruption, Human Rights, Politics
Gender:Male
Local or Foreign:Local
Freelance:No
Charge:Anti-state, Censorship violation, False News
Length of Sentence:Not Sentenced
Reported Health Problems:No

Moroccan security forces on June 6, 2017, arrested Mohamed al-Asrihi, a video journalist and the director of the opposition news website Rif24, at the home of activist Mohsen Athari in the northern town of Trogout where al-Asrihi was hiding, according to news reports and a statement from Rif24.

Police attempted to arrest al-Asrihi on May 27, 2017, while he covered protests organized by al-Hirak al-Shaaby, or the Popular Movement, in the northern city of al-Hoceima, but the website director evaded police and fled the city, his brother, Wail al-Asrihi, told CPJ in June by email.

Al-Asrihi produced video coverage for Rif24 on protests in the Rif area of northern Morocco, and about the protests' imprisoned leader Nasser al-Zefzafi, according to reports and al-Asrihi's Facebook page.

Authorities were holding al-Asrihi in Casablanca's Oukacha Prison pending trial on charges including practicing journalism without official accreditation and receiving foreign funding from "separatists" abroad, according to news reports.

Al-Asrihi is being tried along with 22 activists, including prominent Riffian activist Nabil Ahamjik, according to the news reports.

Al-Asrihi, who did not deny either charge, said a Dutch-Moroccan activist who lives in the Netherlands, Farid Aouled Lahcen, gave him a camera and other journalistic equipment to produce a documentary film. The film was supposed to be about Muhammad Abdelkarim al-Khattabi, a northern Moroccan activist who led an armed movement against the French and the Spanish armies in the 1910s, according to the news reports.

The journalist also faces charges of "disseminating false news," which he denied, according to the reports.

On November 2, the al-Hoceima appeals court merged al-Asrihi's case with two other cases, in which more than 50 al-Hirak al-Shaaby activists, including al-Zefzafi, are being tried on anti-state charges, local media reported. Authorities are charging Hamid el-Mahdaoui, the editor-in-chief of a local news site Badil, in the same case on anti-state charges, according to the reports.

The journalist's lawyer Khalid Imeeza, told journalists that al-Asrihi on November 30, 2017 declared a hunger strike in which he refused to eat or drink, along with other co-defendants, after prison guards allegedly searched their belongings and took some of their clothes, cigarettes and prepaid phone cards, while they were in a court hearing. Moroccan government spokesperson Moustapha Khalfi did not respond to CPJ's request for comment sent via email.

Al-Asrihi's brother told CPJ in September 2017 that the journalist was held in solitary confinement for two months, and has gone on hunger strike multiple times.

Al-Asrihi's trial was ongoing in late 2017.

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