Rabat (AFP)
Moroccan justice has decided to grant provisional release to journalist and human rights activist Omar Radi, who was detained last week for criticizing a court decision on Twitter, his lawyer said on Tuesday.
Mr. Radi, 33, "will appear on January 2 in freedom," Omar Benjelloun told AFP, confirming press reports.
The lawyer was unable to say when exactly the reporter would be released.
Omar Radi was arrested on Thursday for a tweet published in April in which he castigated the verdict of a magistrate against members of the "Hirak", a protest movement that agitated northern Morocco in 2016 and 2017, sentenced to sentences up to 20 years in prison.
"No forgetting, no forgiveness with these officials without dignity!", He had written, describing the judge as "executioner".
His trial began on the day of his arrest, and the case sparked outrage in the kingdom, where hundreds of people demonstrated on Saturday to call for his release and the charges.
In a column Monday in the newspaper Le Monde, a group of journalists, intellectuals, thinkers and artists denounced his imprisonment "for a tweet denouncing the injustice of justice", which "highlights serious breaches of the freedom of press and opinion in Morocco ".
Omar Radi has collaborated with several Moroccan and international media and published remarkable studies on the rent economy or the collusion between power and money.
More recently, he has covered the many protest movements that have agitated marginalized regions of the kingdom.
Human Rights Watch criticized Saturday the arrest of Mr. Radi and denounced an "increasingly suffocating atmosphere for Moroccan journalists, dissidents and artists who speak on social networks".
In a few days in Morocco, a youtubeur was sentenced to four years in prison for "insulting the king", a high school student was sentenced to three years in prison for a publication on Facebook and an activist was detained for a publication on social networks.
A new press code no longer providing for prison terms entered into force in 2016 in Morocco, but journalists continue to be prosecuted according to the Criminal Code, as are internet users for writing on social networks.
© 2019 AFP