BBC Monitoring

Text of report by French news agency AFP

Casablanca (Morocco), 15 August 2007: A Moroccan journalist with the [Arabic-language] weekly, Al Watan Al An, was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment today, Wednesday, while the paper's editor was given a six-month suspended sentence for the publication of "confidential documents" concerning the fight against terrorism.

[On 24 July 2007, the France-based press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, condemned as "judicial harassment" the decision by the Casablanca prosecutor's office, which had released the paper's editor, Abderrahim Ariri, that day, but sent one of its reporters, Mostapha Hurmatallah, to Okacha prison pending trial. The organization reported that the two men were arrested on 17 July after publishing a leaked internal security memo and had both been charged with "receiving documents obtained by criminal means".]

Source: AFP news agency, Paris, in French 1342 gmt 15 Aug 07