A legal campaign against identity thieves of journalists in Morocco

This article was automatically translated from HIBAPRESS, the Arabic version:

Heba Press – Muhammad Zariyouh

Moulay Hassan El Daki, new King’s Attorney General at the Court of Cassation and head of the public prosecutor’s office, sent a note to the attorneys general at the courts of appeal calling on them to coordinate with the King’s prosecutors within their judicial services .

The memorandum underlines the need to give instructions to the judicial police to carry out careful searches on people who claim to exercise the profession of journalist without fulfilling the stipulated legal conditions.

According to well-informed sources, the Minister of Justice, Abdel Latif Wehbe, sent a letter to the Attorney General of the Republic on January 2, demanding that the law be applied against any person posing as a journalist without holding a a professional card issued by the National Press Council.

Wehbe stressed that compliance with the laws guarantees the protection of the profession and its regulation in accordance with the current legal framework.

The correspondent pointed out that some departments and external speakers send invitations to people to cover their activities without verifying their journalistic identity, which opens the way for impersonators to enter the departments and exploit their fictitious characteristics for suspicious purposes.

In the same context, the correspondence included instructions addressed to the General Directorate of National Security, the command of the Royal Gendarmerie and the Ministry of the Interior to verify the identity of journalists covering their interests.

She explained that only a journalist holds a professional card issued by the National Press Council, and that anyone practicing the profession without this accreditation is considered a violation of the law and is subject to legal sanctions.

These measures aim to combat chaos in the journalism sector and ensure that all practitioners adhere to the laws governing the profession, thereby strengthening its credibility and preventing the misexploitation of this capacity.