France: a Moroccan newspaper editor convicted for defamation

The editor of the Moroccan daily ...Assabah... was finally condemned by the French courts for defamation against a journalist from the public channel France 3 whom he had accused of being an agent of the Algerian secret services, according to a judicial source.

•     Abdelmounaim Dilami, director of the publication of the Arabic daily ‘Assabah,’ was sentenced in absentia on 14 October 2008 to 3000 euro fine and 5,000 euros in damages. He had objected to that decision but abandoned Tuesday, making his conviction final.
  
      In October 2007, the France 3 journalist Joseph Tual had revealed the existence of five arrest warrants issued by a French judge against Moroccan nationals suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of Moroccan opponent Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris in 1965.
  
      The arrest warrants were issued during a visit by President Nicolas Sarkozy to Morocco.
  
      In its edition of 3 and 4 November 2007, ‘Assabah’ published an article titled “The Algerian intelligence services hold the Ben Barka case.”
  
      In this article, ‘Assabah’ stated that Joseph Tual was “the linchpin in the Algerian intelligence device because he does not hide his hostility towards Morocco”, an idea considered defamatory by the Correctional Court of Paris.
  
      Mehdi Ben Barka, Moroccan opponent and anti-Moroccan leader in exile, was kidnapped at the age of 45, on 29 October 1965, in boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris, by police and French crooks, marking the beginning of a Case never fully elucidated.
      
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.