Rabat – The Court of First Instance in the city of Safi, 157 kilometers from Marrakech, has convicted a Moroccan woman who claimed online that COVID-19 does not exist.
The judge sentenced the woman to one month in prison after she shared the video on social media in violation of Moroccan law.
In the video, she urged Moroccans not to comply with health authorities’ prescribed preventive measures.
According to Moroccan news outlet 2M, authorities arrested the woman on July 10, following the release of the COVID-19 denial video.
The public prosecution of the court opened an investigation to determine the ramifications and the circumstances of the incident, according to the same source.
They decided to prosecute the woman for inciting people to violate the laws issued by public authorities, for insulting a public official in the line of duty, and for threatening to commit a felony against a person, revealed the source.
In addition, the monitoring cell against COVID-19-related fake news, affiliated with the General Directorate of National Security (DGSN), had tracked her dissemination of inaccurate content about COVID-19 on social media.
The operation led to the arrest of 11 people, including four women.
The situation echoes the case of Youtube influencer “Mi Naima.” Security services arrested the Moroccan woman for releasing a video on March 18 in which she claimed that COVID-19 does not exist.
The 48-year-old received a sentence of one year in prison on April 17. The court decided to shorten her sentence to three months in May.
With over 467,000 followers at the time, “Mi Naima” appeared in several videos on other Youtube accounts where influencers condemned her behavior for compromising Morocco’s COVID-19 response.
She was arrested for inciting people to not comply with the preventive measures that the government put in place to tackle the spread of the virus.
