When El Bachir Hazzam circulated information about the heavy handed crackdown on student protests in the village of Taghjijt (200 km south of Agadir) in Morocco he did so with the the intention of letting the Moroccan society know what was going on, this it seems was not the view of the Moroccan autorities who promptly arrested him and the owner of the cyber cafe he used to get online.

Hazzam was arrested on 7th December in relation to the protest but question revealed that the authorities also were interested in a September 2007 article he had written about the legislative process in Morocco.  He was given a four month sentence while the cyber cafe owner, Abdullah Boukfou was given a 12 month jail term.  Hazzam was charged with ‘?????spreading false information about human rights that undermined the kingdom’s image’ while Boukfou was charged with ‘being in possession of publications that incite racial hatred’.

To say that the charged are superfluous would be an understatement, these are just the cleverest of the what the Moroccan authorities could think of to get a conviction.  At CPB we recognize this as a pattern of lies that governments manufacture to silence online dissidents.

Hazzam has indicated that he will be appealing against the sentence and we wish him the best of luck.

Menassat has more on this.

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Edit: Bashir Hazem was tried on December 14 and sentenced to 4 months in prison. Internet cafe owner Abdullah Boukhou was sentenced to one year.  More information can be found on the campaign’s web site, freebashir.org.

Moroccan blogger Bashir Hazem was arrested on December 8, 2009 following a protest in Tarjijt, during which students clashed with security forces, after posting a press release about the clash on his blog.  He has been interrogated about his blogging, specifically his most recent post, which contained the signatures of a committee of arrested students.

Hazem was detained and put in solitary confinement for a period of time, then rejoined the other detainees in the prison.  Hazem is a 26-year-old student of literature.

A Facebook group [ar] has been created to support blogger Bashir Hazem, who has been detained in Goulmim prison in the south of Morocco for publishing a statement about the intervention of the police force against an inhabitant of the Goulmim, on his blog “Al Boushara” (”the good news”).

According to the President of the Moroccan Bloggers Association, Internet cafes in the city are being monitored in order to prevent Internet users from disseminating information about the event, and to prevent riots.  The authorities have also arrested others suspected of spreading news about the protests, including an Internet cafe employee, for possessing protest materials and flyers.

Hazem will face trial on Monday, December 14, 2009.

Jillian C. York

The Committee to Protect Bloggers welcomes on board Jillian C. York. Jillian is a writer and activist based in Boston.  She works at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, coordinating the OpenNet Initiative and working on the Herdict Web project, and is affiliated with Global Voices Online, where she writes about Morocco (where she used to live), Syria, and Palestine.

She has worked with a number of organizations on issues involving free speech online, including Tor and Global Voices Advocacy. She blogs at jilliancyork.

To see our entire roster, click here.

Andrew Ford Lyons

Andrew Ford Lyons
Andrew is a Web design and online media strategies consultant from the US living in UK. He’s a former newspaper reporter and editor and a freelance writer. He’s worked on web projects with several organisations, including the International Solidarity Movement, Rachel Corrie Foundation and the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project. He’s currently on the advisory board for the International Trauma Treatment Program and studying psychology.
Blog: drew3000

Jillian C. York

Jillian C. York
Jillian is a writer and activist based in Boston.  She works at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, coordinating the OpenNet Initiative and working on the Herdict Web project, and is affiliated with Global Voices Online, where she writes about Morocco (where she used to live), Syria, and Palestine.  She has worked with a number of organizations on issues involving free speech online, including Tor and Global Voices Advocacy.
Blog: jilliancyork

Nigel Parry

Nigel Parry
Nigel was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1968, and was brought up in Singapore. In his early years, Nigel had the opportunity to travel to Africa, India, and much of the Far East. The creator of numerous groundbreaking websites including The Electronic Intifada (EI), Electronic Iraq (eIraq) and Electronic Lebanon. Today, Nigel offers web and print design, public relations/publicity, and Internet consulting through his company nigelparry.net. Nigel is currently based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he spends his non-work time researching, writing, and playing music. A more complete biography is here.
Website: nigelparry.com

James Buck

James Buck
James is a U.S-based photojournalist and multimedia producer. He is currently a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in Saudi Arabia and has two dogs. James, a photojournalist and multimedia producer, blogs at Journalism is Not a Crime, and is a Twitterer, probably best known for his arrest at the hands of the Egyptian police while covering a protest. He Twittered “arrested” which caused a brushfire of attention. (Then “free” when he was released.)
Blog: Journalism is Not a Crime

Victor Maritim Ng’eny

Victor Maritim Ng’eny
Victor writes on issues of media and journalism the emerging phenomenon of citizen journalism and the much cliched ‘WEB 2.0′ and is a contributing writer at Africanpath. Victor lives in Kenya, and shuttlea between Nairobi and Kericho (his home). He studies journalism at Uganda Pentecostal University in Uganda where his focus is on digital media.When not on the www, he plays rugby, writes poetry, writes programmes, think about marketing and tries to write the next best novel in the world.
Blog: afro-puffs

Austin Heap

Austin Heap
Austin is an activist and technologist, whose work centers on developing Internet based technologies for establishing rapid transfer of knowledge between people, groups, and organizations. Building on his past work, he is currently working on designing and developing Internet- based technologies that simultaneously optimize users’ networking and personalization within and between online communities and organizations.  He is the Executive Director of the Censorship Research Center in San Francisco.
Blog: Austin Heap

Blogger and journalist, Hassan Barhoun has had his six months sentence extended to ten months on appeal.  Barhoun had been arrested for ’spreading false news’ by publishing a petition signed by 60 people that accused the public prosecutor of collusion in a corruption case, he had been sentenced to six months but on appeal his sentence had four months added on to it.

Morocco’s online freedoms record is appaling to say the least and this only makes it worse.  It is noteworthy that instead of Barhoun being questioned over his article, the authority’s response was to thrown in jail and preffer trumped up charges on him.

Another thing is that during his court case defence lawyers were not even allowed to submit any pleadings, a fact that clearly shows that the court case was just a rubber stamp in this injustice.

CPB would like to ask the Moroccan authority to respect the freedom of speech as enshrined in the UN Declaration on Human Rights and release Barhoun and the other bloggers in custody immediately.

According to the CPJ, Moroccan blogger Hassan Barhon “faces criminal defamation charges.” He was arrested on February 25 in the city of Tetouan for allegedly “defaming a prosecutor.”

Barhon regularly posts hundreds of photos and video reports on his blog and on popular photo and video hosting sites that chronicle alleged corruption and collusion with criminals by local and city government officials. Barhon’s detention is related to a petition he circulated that called Mohamed Masmouki, prosecutor-general for the king of Morocco at Tetouan’s court of appeals, a “dangerous criminal,” his lawyer, Habib Hajji, told CPJ. Scores of citizens, journalists, and rights activists signed the petition, which accused Masmouki of undermining “people’s sacred beliefs and the state institutions” and called for the need to put him on a “popular trial,” a group called the Moroccan Association of Bloggers said in a press release.

Various types of “defamation” are a popular quasi-legal avenue for the prosecution of bloggers and others who register opinions and do reporting that reveals those in authority in a poor light. Last February, Moroccan officials imprisoned Fouad Mourtada, a Facebook user who created a satirical social networking account for one of the country’s princelings.  He was later pardoned.

Mohamed Erraji was also arrested last September, hustled through to a conviction two days later, then acquitted.

Considered Barhon has been a consistent and vocal opponent of corruption in the kingdom’s judiciary, we are not so sanguine that he will also be released, but we hope so. Countries like Morocco should be grateful for the work of men like Barhon, who care enough about their country that they observe and report on those areas in which it could remake itself. They’re lucky to have them. Any country is lucky to have such citizens.

The CPB encourages its members to write to the King and request that these charges be immediately dropped. Here is the contact information for those members in the United States. If you would care to find and share the contact information for the Moroccan king in your country, please post it in the comments.

His Majesty King Mohamed VI of Morocco
C/O His Excellency Aziz Mekouar, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Morocco
to the United States of America
?1601 21st Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20009
Via Fax: 202-265-0161

It is sad that governments have resorted to blocking websites and blogs at a very disturbing pace.  From GlobalVoices we learn that, Morocco has blocked four opposition site, while we support none of the political antagonist we maintain that everybody should be able to air the views on the web.

Another country is Bahrain which has blocked sites numbering at least 65, which include blogs, websites and even Google, the search engine.  Visitors trying to access the sites are met with a sign proclaim that the ’sites have been blocked by the order of the ministry of information’

Shame this is!