Lmrabet sued by MAP correspondents in Madrid for slandering
Morocco, Politics, 4/15/2005

Ali Lmrabet, a Moroccan-French journalist living in Spain, has been sued by two correspondents of Morocco's state-owned new agency "Maghreb Arab Press" (MAP) in Madrid for slandering, legal sources revealed in Madrid Wednesday.

Controversial Lmrabet, who writes for the Spanish daily "El Mundo," is being sued by Mansour Madani and Ida Hassan for an article, published last March 11 by El Mundo, entitled: "an army of informers" in which he described them as "informers on the payroll of the Moroccan secret service, that knew, before the terrorist attacks of Madrid, that something was woven against Spain of (former Prime Minister) Aznar."

The complaint was filed at the First Instance Court of Madrid by the two MAP journalists who will be defended by Jesus Santaella Lopez, a renowned Spanish lawyer specialized in cases related to violations of the press law. He was also chief of the legal department of the Press Association of Madrid, one of the largest press Unions in Europe.

The two journalists had addressed, on March 15, four days after the publication of the article, a letter to El Mundo asking for the right to reply to Lmrabet's accusations, but were denied this right by the Spanish newspaper.

Attorney Santaella supports that the collaborator of El Mundo, uttered "charges without any base that are seriously defamatory against the correspondents of the Moroccan agency in his article 'an army of informers'." He argues that Lmrabet's claims are only "speculations and bear sensational character (...)." Santaella underlined the "gravity" of these accusations especially as the date chosen for the publication of the article coincided with the first anniversary of the Madrid blasts (March 11).

The Spanish lawyer backed his complaint by a series of articles published in Spanish media which, he said, show that the charges of Lmrabet were interpreted by the readers in a very simple way:

"The correspondents of MAP knew that something was woven in Spain and that could have consequences as tragic as those which have occurred in March 2004" in Madrid, Lmrabet wrote in his article. Santaella raises several contradictions in the declarations of Lmrabet, in particular those to the " Periodista DIGITAL ( Online newspaper) in which he says that he did not even know how many journalists worked at the office of MAP in Madrid, a fact which shows lack of rigor and professionalism.

He asks the tribunal to restore the honor and the prestige of the correspondents of MAP in Madrid, and to prevent Lmrabet from uttering such defamatory allegations in the future. He also asks the court to impose a fine on Lmrabet and to make him publish the ruling in the columns of the newspaper El Mundo and in two other Spanish daily newspapers.

Previous Stories:
  Liz Cheney: Morocco could be a model for countries of the region   (4/14/2005)
  Court bans Lmrabet from exercising journalism for 10 years   (4/13/2005)
  NGOs stage sit-in to denounce Ali Lmrabet statements   (4/6/2005)

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