Muffled speech in Morocco

LAST MONTH, A SMALL ITEM in Morocco’s most provocative magazine pointed out that a female member of Parliament had once been a cheikha -- a kind of Moroccan cabaret dancer. She sued, and now the writer and the magazine’s editor face prison time and what may be the harshest fine ever handed down in a Moroccan libel case.

Never mind that the member of Parliament was not actually named in the magazine. Or that the allegation was true. Or that the judge did not listen to arguments from either side. Or that the magazine’s editor, Ahmed R. Benchemsi, not only wasn’t at the hearing to defend himself but was out of the country at the time -- serving, as it happens, as an editorial fellow on the Los Angeles Times editorial board.

While it isn’t Times policy to harbor fugitives from Third World justice, nor to argue their cases in print, Benchemsi’s plight is so illustrative of what passes for justice and freedom of speech in much of the world -- and of the kind of low-grade harassment journalists face even from many “progressive” regimes -- that it deserves comment. Morocco is a beacon of relative freedom and tolerance in the Arab world; King Mohammed VI is a close ally of the U.S., and President Bush in his State of the Union address cited the country as an example of the positive democratic reforms starting to take hold across the region.

Yet consider some of the details from Benchemsi’s case. His French-language magazine, TelQuel, takes impish glee in tweaking the establishment, exposing such taboo subjects as the king’s monthly salary. The cheikha item was just a gossipy tidbit, and the plaintiff’s lawyer was asking for only a fine, not prison time.

The judge ignored a letter from Benchemsi, presented by his lawyer, asking for a postponement until he returned to the country. At the hearing Monday, the judge recessed at noon and said proceedings would resume at 2:30 p.m. Then the judge returned to court at 2:15 p.m. and ruled that, because neither side’s attorney was present, the case was closed. Shortly afterward, he sentenced both Benchemsi and the article’s writer to two months in prison and fined the magazine the equivalent of $100,000 -- a fee so punitive by Moroccan standards that it could force the magazine out of business. Benchemsi plans to appeal when he returns to Morocco in September.

Benchemsi is probably correct when he asserts that the ruling had little to do with the cheikha item; someone in Morocco’s establishment clearly doesn’t appreciate TelQuel’s independent journalism. But if such an arbitrary ruling isn’t reversed, Morocco’s image in the outside world will take a deserved blow.