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Rabat – The Moroccan government addressed on Thursday the controversy surrounding the expulsion of two French journalists, Quentin Muller and Therese Di Campo, by Moroccan authorities.
Speaking during the traditional weekly press briefing, the government spokesperson Mustapha Baitas said that authorities expelled the two journalists because they “entered Morocco as tourists” without declaring their status as journalists.
“They did not request any authorization and did not declare that they were journalists intending to engage in journalistic work, as explicitly mandated by all laws regulating this field,” Baitas added.
“It is quite normal for them to be deported by administrative authorities,” he added, noting that Morocco authorities acted in accordance with legal provisions.
The two journalists were reportedly arrested by plainclothes police on Wednesday at 3 AM. Quentin Muller is the deputy editor-in-chief at the weekly French news magazine Marianne Quentin Muller while Therese Di Campo works as a photojournalist.
The two journalists took to Twitter to accuse Moroccan authorities of being “repressive,” saying that they “forcibly expelled” them from the country “without any explanation.”
Muller claimed that “these arrests are purely political,” adding to her tweet the hashtag #Journalismisnotacrime.
Read also: Morocco’s Earthquake: Clarifying the Controversy amidst French Media Misrepresentation
In response, Baitas noted that more than 310 foreign journalists representing around 90 international media outlets had covered the earthquake that hit central Morocco on September 8.
He stressed that these journalists carried out their work openly and without constraints, engaging freely with citizens and those affected by the earthquake.
Baitas underlined Morocco’s commitment to upholding press freedom, affirming that no journalist faces any form of pressure or discrimination.
Debunking Buller’s claim that the expulsion was politically motivated, Baitas revealed that among the 310 foreign journalists who covered the earthquake, 78 were correspondents from 16 French media outlets, around a quarter of the total.
He noted that 13 of them were accredited for the earthquake coverage, and three held permanent accreditation. However, he expressed concern about the objectivity of their coverage in some instances.
