A Moroccan YouTuber was sentenced on Thursday to four years in prison for “insulting the king” in a video broadcast on social networks, his lawyer said. The cases come after the Moroccan Human Rights Association had deplored in July an “escalation of violations of human rights and public and individual freedoms” in Morocco. The conviction of the YouTuber came less than a month after a Moroccan rapper was sentenced to a year in prison for “insulting a public official”. Morocco’s criminal code punishes “insulting magistrates” with imprisonment of between one month and one year. The group Reporters Without Borders in its latest annual press freedom index ranked Morocco 135th out of 180 countries.

Source: Punch December 26, 2019 16:18 UTC