Morocco: Court orders suspension of news website, editors fined for “false news” and “defamation”

On 10 August 2015 the Court of First Instance in Meknes convicted Hamid Elmahdaouy, journalist and editorial director of the online news website Badil.info, of reporting “false news” and publishing an unregistered “newspaper”. The court ordered him to pay a fine of 30,000 Moroccan dirhams (about 3,000 US dollars) and suspend his news website for three months. The journalist intends to appeal the decision.

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