Journalist Omar Radi sentenced to six years in prison on appeal

Moroccan journalist Omar Radi was sentenced to six years in prison on appeal Thursday, March 3, while colleague Imad Stitou received a one-year prison sentence.

The 35-year-old reporter was prosecuted for “undermining the internal security of the state and rape charges. He received a nearly identical sentence to that of journalist Souleiman Raissouni, who is to serve 5 years behind bars for “sexual assault” charges.

Radi’s lawyer said he would appeal the ruling in the Supreme Court, saying that the court issued a “very harsh judgment,” telling AFP that they “exposed all the elements proving Radi’s innocence before the court but nothing has been taken into account.”

On Tuesday, the prosecution demanded “the maximum sentence against the accused in view of the evidence against Radi,” equating to 10 years in prison.

Regarding the rape charge, Radi’s ex-coworker accused him of the crime, while he maintains that the relationship between the two “was fully consensual.”

When it comes to the espionage charge, the prosecutor says that his bureau’s investigations showed that Radi met with Dutch diplomatic representatives identified by the prosecution as “intelligence officers,” and received payments from them with the intent of collusion with a foreign organ against the state.

The prosecution also accused the journalist of having “provided information of the order of espionage” to two British economic consultancy firms. Radi explained that he had carried out verification audits for these two firms but, as an economics specialist, saying he only did his job as a journalist, “relying on publicly available data.”

Other elements of the case include funding received from a Geneva-based foundation, Bertha, which Radi said was “a research grant on illegal predatory land grabbing in Morocco.”

But the public prosecutor ruled that the journalist had collaborated with a foundation “hostile to the territorial integrity of the country.”

Regarding Radi’s colleague, Imad Stitou, he was initially questioned by authorities as a witness to the alleged rape Radi was accused of, but after he confirmed Radi’s claim that his relationship with the plaintiff was “consensual,” he was charged with “failure to report a crime.”