A Moroccan court on Monday sentenced a rap star to a year
in prison and a fine of 1,000 dirhams ($103) for insulting the police in a case
that has prompted rights groups to voice alarm over freedom of expression in
the North African kingdom.
Mohamed Mounir, known as Gnawi, was arrested on Nov. 1 and
confessed to cursing the police in a live social media feed a week earlier,
saying he had been drunk. He can still appeal to Monday’s sentence.
He told the judge he had recorded the live feed because he
felt he had been “mistreated by police” earlier that day when they stopped him
and checked his identity papers. “This trial has nothing to do with freedom of
expression. This is a penal code matter,” police lawyer Abdelfattah Yatribi
said. However, Mounir’s lawyer, Mohamed Sadkou, said the authorities may have
focused on the rapper because of a song he and two other singers had recorded
that appeared to criticize the king. The three released the song “Aacha Chaab”
– “long live the people” – on YouTube on Oct. 29, gaining 15 million views,
with Mounir’s lines in the song focusing on his usual themes of social justice
and corruption. But one of the other rappers included lines that accused the
king of oppression and insulted his religious role in Morocco. The song and the
other rappers were not mentioned during Monday’s trial. Mounir’s lawyers said
he should have been tried under a separate set of laws governing the press and
publishing that do not allow imprisonment.
The prosecutor rejected this argument,
however, saying Mounir was neither a journalist nor a publisher. Yatribi asked
the judge to add the charge of “insulting god” to the case against Mounir. Some
of Mounir’s fans gathered outside the court in Sale near Rabat. “Gnawi is
innocent. We want him free. He only speaks about the rights of the people. He
insulted the police because he was under the impact of alcohol,” said one of
his supporters, Mohamed Nouari. Amnesty International issued a statement
denouncing the verdict and urging Gnawi’s immediate release. “Expressing
peaceful criticism of the police or the authorities is not a crime.
International law protects the right to freedom of expression, even when the
opinions shared are shocking or offensive,” Amnesty International’s Middle East
and North Africa Director Heba Morayef was quoted as saying. Morocco, a
constitutional monarchy where the king holds sweeping powers, had widespread
protests during the Arab Spring in 2011, but reformed its constitution to allow
more political rights. Protests have periodically broken out since.
Source: Reuters