By Larbi Arbaoui
Morocco World News
Taroudant, Morocco, July 11, 2012
The Spanish television station Antena 3 was found guilty by Brussels’ Court of First Instance and ordered to pay 215,000 euros in damages for forgery and fraudulent use of photography of a Moroccan family pretending to be the corpses of Sahrawis during the dismantlement of camp Gdim Izik, in November 2010.
The court of first instance of Brussels on Wednesday rendered a verdict in favor of the family Rachdi, complainant in this case.
The photo in question was that of a quadruple murder that was perpetrated in Casablanca by a mentally disordered criminal, in January 2010.
“The family members of the victims of this tragic incident have been compensated for their moral and material prejudice”, said on Wednesday their lawyers , Pierre Legros and Anne Monseu, during a press conference in Brussels.
Pierre Legros, the Belgian lawyer of the family Rachdi, made it clear that the misleading spread by Spanish television station Antena 3 of photography of the crime scene in Casablanca as one of the events that occurred in Laayoune in November 2010, is a serious professional misconduct.
For his part, Tabih, another lawyer of the family Rachdi, noted that “Antena 3 had violated all laws and rules and it maintains its erroneous view of the facts…. which affects the basic principles of human rights.”
Members of the bereaved family residing in Brussels had denounced the exploitation of the death of their loved ones before the Belgian courts . “What matters is not money but an official excuse that we are still waiting for”, said Rashida Rashidi to Moroccan TV channel 2M.
The verdict, which does justice to the family Rachdi and the dead, legally confirms that the Spanish channel Antena 3 has been bent on spreading anti-Moroccan media propaganda, supporting the Polisario and its Algerian mentors, thus, undermining the security, territorial integrity and national sovereignty of Morocco.
