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Rabat – The French Journalists suspected of blackmailing King Mohammed VI have protested the recordings of their voice requesting € 3 million to keep an allegedly compromising book about the Moroccan monarch unpublished, saying the recordings are “illegal.”
French news website, Sud Ouest, reported that on Tuesday, Eric Laurent and co-author Catherine Graciet would demand the judge not to use the recordings as evidence against them at trial, claiming they were “trapped” and the recordings are “illegal”.
The two journalists have been placed under formal investigation since August, after King Mohammed VI filed a complaint accusing them of attempting to blackmail by threatening to publish a book about him.
During investigations in mid-October, Catherine Graciet admitted that she had accepted a sum of money offered by King Mohammed VI’s lawyer, Hicham Nacir i, in order to keep what she describes as “the explosive book” unpublished.
However, she stressed that she did not blackmail King Mohammed VI. “It was his lawyer who proposed the deal,” she claimed.
Eric Laurent, on the other hand, confessed last August, while in detention, that he indeed picked up the phone and called the royal cabinet, demanding the whopping amount of money or else a book containing ‘damaging revelations’ will hit the bookstore shelves early next year.
The freelance investigative journalists, known for their critical work on the Moroccan monarchy, were arrested in Paris in August, after a meeting with the Moroccan king’s lawyer.
Eric Dupont-Moretti stated that, during the meeting, Eric Laurent and Catherine Graciet claimed that they had received a payment and signed a contract for not publishing the book.
Dupont-Moretti also stated that the meetings with the journalists had been recorded and they were “caught red-handed”.
In accordance with French law, the two journalists face a minimum of 5 years in prison for their attempt to extort money from King Mohammed VI.
