The Arrest of Ali Lmrabet Lays Bare the Police-State Nature of the Moroccan Regime
By Soulaimane Raissouni
The arrest of journalist Ali Lmrabet immediately upon his arrival at Tangier Airport from Spain once again exposes the police-state character of the Moroccan regime. It strips away the carefully cultivated façade of a “state governed by law” and the much-vaunted “new concept of authority,” revealing them for what they are: little more than cosmetic makeup washed away by the first downpour, leaving the regime’s deeply entrenched ugliness exposed beneath the artificial veneer.
On 11 April 2005, a Moroccan court handed down one of the most surreal judicial rulings in modern legal history: a ten-year ban preventing journalist Ali Lmrabet from practicing journalism. Few verdicts anywhere in the world have matched its unprecedented nature.
If the Arabic word qaḍāʾ “justice” carries a second meaning—that of “elimination”—then it aptly describes what was done to Lmrabet that day. The objective was not merely to sentence a journalist but to erase him professionally: to suffocate his newspapers, shatter his pens, and pursue every article he wrote, even those published outside Morocco, for an entire decade.
One episode remains particularly telling. At the time, Fatiha El Ayadi, then Director of Information at the Ministry of Communication, wrote—whether on instructions from her superiors or another authority—to the Spanish daily El Mundo, informing its management that Morocco had banned one of the newspaper’s editions because it contained an article by Ali Lmrabet. El Mundo responded by publishing her letter alongside a sardonic editorial note observing that the newspaper sold no more than one hundred copies in Morocco even under the best of circumstances.
The conduct of Nabil Benabdallah, who was serving as Minister of Communication at the time, deserves equal scrutiny. Carrying a dossier under his arm, he travelled to France, gathered a number of journalists, waved the file before them without ever allowing them to inspect it, and declared that Ali Lmrabet was mentally unstable and undergoing psychiatric treatment in Morocco, urging them not to take his reporting seriously.
Serious French newspapers reacted with astonishment to what they regarded as an extraordinary campaign of disinformation conducted by a Moroccan minister who claimed internationalist credentials. Had the Moroccan state wished to contest Lmrabet’s reporting, it could simply have issued rebuttals. Even assuming, for argument’s sake, that he had indeed suffered from mental illness—which was entirely untrue—what kind of public official would choose to stigmatize a patient rather than address the substance of his work?
What Benabdallah never acknowledged was that his campaign against Lmrabet had a distinctly personal dimension. The journalist had previously reported that Benabdallah, together with Abbas El Fassi, had discreetly attended the wedding of one of Driss Basri’s sons while Basri himself had already fallen from royal favour. Rather than defending the interests of the state, Benabdallah appeared to be settling a personal score.
Personally, I have never been particularly fond of describing journalism as “the profession of hardship.” I find its hardships exhilarating, much like mountain climbing or sculpting stone. Yet when one reflects upon Ali Lmrabet’s career, it becomes impossible to ignore the extraordinary succession of ordeals he has endured.
Nor did those hardships come solely from the state and its security apparatus. Even opposition circles occasionally targeted him whenever his investigative reporting proved inconvenient. Like any genuinely independent journalist, Lmrabet scrutinised abuses within the state with the same determination that he applied to its opponents.
This was evident in 1998, when the Islamist newspaper Al-Tajdid enthusiastically published a fabricated story claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had presented Lmrabet with a car delivered through the port of Casablanca. The newspaper later discovered that it had itself become the unwitting instrument of those who had planted the false information.
The irony was striking. While opposition parties accused Lmrabet of collaborating with Zionists, André Azoulay travelled to Washington to complain to Kenneth Roth—then Executive Director of Human Rights Watch—that the journalist whom the organisation was defending was allegedly anti-Semitic. Roth replied that even if Lmrabet were anti-Semitic—a claim for which there was no evidence—this could never justify persecuting him, prosecuting him outside the rule of law, or allowing state agencies to remove documents from his legal case under the cover of darkness.
The ten-year prohibition imposed on Ali Lmrabet remains one of the darkest chapters in Morocco’s human rights record. It was not only a profound injustice against one journalist; it also represented a stain on the country’s commitment to freedom of expression.
Can that chapter finally be closed?
As long as those responsible for the abuses committed against Lmrabet continue to occupy positions of authority, they remain capable of acknowledging the harm inflicted upon him, offering the apology he deserves, and undertaking that no journalist will again be subjected to similar treatment.
More importantly, the profession itself must be protected through legislation and professional safeguards that uphold journalism, preserve its independence, and shield those who practice it from every form of abuse and arbitrary interference.
— 𝐄𝐍𝐃 —
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