Soulaiman RAISSOUNI

Journalist, editor and writer Soulaiman Raissouni faced harassment after he was released on 29 July after receiving a royal pardon, along with 2,000 others. Raissouni had been arbitrarily detained since May 2020, when he was arrested on charges of ‘sexual assault’ and ‘enforced confinement’, part of a pattern of the Moroccan authorities’ intimidation of dissenting voices through the use of sexual assault charges. He was sentenced to a five-year prison term and a fine in July 2021 (see Case Lists 2023/2024, 2022 and 2021). However, a few days after his release, he became the target of a vicious smear campaign by pro-government media following a press conference he held with Omar Radi (see above), and Taoufik Bouachrine at the Moroccan Association of Human Rights in August. In September, Raissouni was subject to further smears by pro-government media outlet after he gave an interview to the Spanish news website El Independiente criticising the three journalists’ detention. He also remains unable to work in Morocco.  Prior to his arrest in 2020, Raissouni had been targeted for surveillance by Pegasus spyware over a two-year period, starting in 2017.

Soulaiman Raissouni, born 5 June 1972, is a prominent Moroccan journalist and editor-in-chief of the now-closed opposition newspaper Akhbar al-Youm. While in prison, Raissouni wrote a prison diary, but this and a draft novel were confiscated in 2022, prompting him to refuse family visits for some weeks.