(MENAFN- Morocco World News) Rabat - Hamid El Mehdaoui, journalist and director of news site Badil, has been arrested in Al Hoceima for "inciting people to protest" in the Rif region.
The arrested was announced Thursday by the Public Prosecutor in Al Hoceima, who said the journalist is being investigated over suspicions of having committed "illegal acts."
The release stated that El Mehdaoui made a speech to a crowd gathered at Place Mohammed VI in Al Hoceima encouraging them to take part in the July 20 protest banned by the government.
The night before the planned mass march in Al Hoceima, a video posted on Youtube and Facebook showed El Mehdaoui talking to a group of people, criticizing the government and the detention of Rif activists.
"The continuous detention of activists is an aggression against us," El Mehdaoui says in the video. "The state might be strong but we are stronger with the fact that our cause is just."
"By announcing its decision to ban the [July 20] march, the Moroccan state appeared weak and frightened," the editor asserts.
The speech was considered by the Public Prosecutor as "incompatible with journalism as a profession dealing with collecting information and facts or investigating about them in a professional way in order to write or make media material," according to the definition of journalism in Moroccan press code.
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