Rabat – The administration of the Ain Borja local prison in Casablanca said that detained journalist Soulaiman Raissouni’s hunger strike is due to “foreign parties’ influence.”
In a statement on Saturday, the local administration denied that the journalist’s hunger strike came as part of his protest to the conditions of his detention.
The statement came amid frequent complaints from Raissouni’s wife Khouloud Mokhtari regarding what she alleges as “consecutive arbitrary treatment” against her husband.
Mokhtari said that Raissouni has been subjected to alleged “arbitrary treatment,” including “depriving him of his fundamental rights inside the prison, including the tearing of his books, letters, and his novel project.”
In response to the allegations, the local prison administration said that the reasons for the “hunger strike initiated by the individual in question [Raissouni] relate to the control of his correspondence by the prison administration. However, the control of letters sent and received by detainees is in accordance with the law governing prisons,” the establishment said.
The administration added that it consulted the content of the correspondence sent by the detainee to a foreign party and found that “it contained abusive and defamatory remarks and false information.”
“This letter was consequently seized and submitted to the competent judicial authorities,” the administration added, noting that questioning the motives behind his hunger strike and its timing.
It also said that it questions the “role of certain members of his family who incited him to undertake this act with uncertain consequences regardless of the potential repercussions on his health,” the administration added.
Police arrested the journalist and editor-in-chief of the Akhbar Al Yaoum newspaper last year after a man claimed Raissouni assaulted him in 2018.
Raissouni has been in prison since May 2020 after his alleged victim under the pseudonym Adam Muhammad accused him of “assault.”
The alleged victim identified himself as a member of the Moroccan LGBT community. In 2022, a court upheld a five-year sentence against the journalist who was initially sentenced in July 2021.
This is not the first time that Raissouni initiated a hunger strike to protest his arrest.
Since Raissouni’s arrest, NGOs and human rights activists have been calling for his immediate release.
