Dissident Spotlight: Abdelkabir Al-Hor
Al-Hor's negative coverage of his government led to four years' imprisonment. Morocco found his reporting on corruption too accurate.
Abdelkabir Al-Hor founded a website called Rassd Maroc that covered the Moroccan government’s corruption and policy failures.
Stories included coverage of the Al Hirak protests. These were a series of protests that erupted in the city of Al Hoceima in October 2016. Protesters complained of poverty and neglect from policymakers more interested in lining their pockets than giving ordinary Moroccans support to build comfortable lives.
In 2017, Rassd Maroc’s Facebook page featured a post encouraging readers to join the protests. Al-Hor was arrested shortly afterwards and charged with “insulting state authority,” “inciting disobedience,” and “condoning terrorism.”
According to The New Arab, the charge concerning terrorism came from the site’s coverage of “the assassination of Russia's ambassador to Turkey last year and violent protests in the city of al-Hoceimah.”
He was sentenced to four years in prison in 2018. Al-Hor was finally released in 2022 after serving his full sentence.
When Alternative Points of View Become Crimes
Moroccan authorities didn’t really believe Al-Hor was involved in terrorism or condoning violence by posting about violent incidents. The goal was to silence Al-Hor’s influential criticism and cut him off from his followers. Allowing dissident groups to organize is a threat to autocratic rulers.
Even “condoning terrorism” is a ridiculous charge. In a country with free speech, people are free to condone terrorism as long as they don’t materially support terrorist groups or organize terrorist acts.
The United States is even free to have its own overtly biased news sources. Sites like Breitbart and Newsmax have political agendas they use their platforms to spin stories to fit. They enjoy the legal right to do so regardless of who occupies the White House or controls Congress.
Al-Hor is a reminder that we in the West have the freedom to report the news as we see it.