RABAT, Morocco - Nadia Yassine came to court with all the fanfare befitting a star. Her lips taped with a red X to symbolize government attempts to silence her, the Muslim activist was mobbed by hundreds of supporters and accompanied by about 170 volunteer defense attorneys.
Her crime: saying in an interview June 2 that the “monarchy is not suitable for Morocco,” that she prefers a republic, and that the regime is near collapse.
Now Mrs. Yassine and the editor of the weekly that published her words face up to five years in prison, the latest target in the kingdom’s crackdown on an independent press that has grown more political, transformed in recent years into an opposition platform of sorts.
Despite the emergence of a relatively free press, Mrs. Yassine crossed the line by criticizing the monarchy in a country whose motto — “God, Homeland, the King” — is emblazoned everywhere.
Nabil Benabdellah, the minister of communication, said Mrs. Yassine violated the constitution. The law, he told reporters, will be applied “against those who exploit the atmosphere of democracy and freedom … to damage the institutions and the sacred values of our country.”
The Moroccan Constitution says: “The person of the King shall be sacred and inviolable.” The Moroccan press code deems any insult to the royal family, Islam or the territorial integrity of the monarchy to be punishable by a prison sentence of three to five years and a fine of $1,200 to $12,000.
Mrs. Yassine, 46, is unrepentant.
“I don’t regret saying a single word,” she said. “It was vital for me to say what I felt. Jihad for me is not to put a bomb but to express myself.”
Her trial was put on hold after a confrontation when she showed up with the 170 attorneys, most of them volunteers who initially were barred from entering the court.
Abd Ilah Kartat, one of Mrs. Yassine’s attorneys, said barring the others was meant to provoke defense protests and postpone the session, and that was what happened.
About an hour after the chaotic session began, the three judges postponed the trial indefinitely.
Mrs. Yassine is the daughter of Sheik Abdessalam Yassine, spiritual leader of the banned but tolerated Islamic group Adl wal Ihsan, or Justice and Spirituality. She is no stranger to controversy and it is not the first time she has been dragged to court.
Barring attorneys was an indication that the state was “returning to its old habits,” said Mrs. Yassine.
Hard-liners in senior positions of power are trying to stymie independent publications that criticize state institutions, said law professor and analyst Muhammad Darif.
“The trial of Nadia Yassine is in fact an attempt by these forces to get back at the independent press,” Mr. Darif said.
Abdelaziz Koukas, editor of al-Osbouia al-Jadida that published Mrs. Yassine’s comments, said authorities expect the press to merely report news generated by King Mohammed VI.
But the duty of an independent press “is to criticize. This angers authorities who regard it as disrespect to the king,” Mr. Koukas, 40, told the Associated Press.
Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based watchdog group, has condemned the trial.
“The authorities are trying to intimidate and discipline the media so that they only quote politicians approved by the state,” the group said in a statement.
It said writers on various papers who picked up Mrs. Yassine’s comments also were summoned by judicial police, but Mr. Koukas is the only one to have been charged.
The case is being watched closely at a time when the United States is putting pressure on its allies in the region to allow greater democracy. But Morocco is feeling other pressures.
In 2003, bombings thought linked to al Qaeda killed 24 persons in Casablanca. In recent weeks, the country has been reeling from a wave of disturbances in the disputed Western Sahara and several cities. About 50 people were detained for taking part in demonstrations that involved burning Moroccan flags and throwing stones and firebombs as security forces used strong-arm tactics to disperse them, Amnesty International said.
One of the detained protesters was sentenced to 20 years in prison on June 28, and two others to 15 years for “belonging to a criminal gang, blocking public roads, violence against civil servants, sabotage of public property and participation in an armed riot.”
In view of events, Mr. Koukas said, authorities thought it best to postpone his trial, perhaps until September. “They wanted things to sit for a while, cool down,” he said.
The trial is among other measures taken by the hard-liners — in the security agencies, King Mohammed’s court and the government of socialist Prime Minister Driss Jettou — to curb free expression, said Mr. Darif, the law professor and analyst.
Parliament passed legislation last month that criminalizes insulting state symbols, including burning the national flag. The move was instigated by the unrest over the Western Sahara. The territory, which Morocco annexed in 1975, is claimed by a rebel government-in-exile.
Mr. Koukas said the tough response shows the government has been taken aback by the speed of change and openness.
“The authority suspects everything, wants to know every move,” he said.
Mr. Koukas, who said he is a “monarchist to the bone,” has published previous interviews with Mrs. Yassine criticizing the monarchy, but as a journalist, “this doesn’t prevent me from letting someone who is a republican to the bone speak her opinion freely.”
“I don’t agree with Nadia Yassine at all,” he added, saying that if she were somehow in power, reporters would be silenced. “I would go to jail if I published a picture of an unveiled woman under the rule of Nadia Yassine — on immorality charges.”
Mrs. Yassine said she is prepared to go to prison: “I have been ready for this for 30 years. I want freedom, to be able to say what I want.”
Her father’s movement, Justice and Spirituality, is a leading Islamist force whose strength is in its charity work. Like other Islamic groups, it has connected with the poor by providing food, legal aid and other help where the government has been ineffective.
Sheik Yassine’s message of compassionate Islam has a sizable following among ordinary Moroccans, especially the disillusioned and jobless.
His daughter, a university-educated mother of four, argues that Islam is the nearest thing to democracy. In a country of 30 million, one-third of them extremely poor and more than half of them illiterate, the most vulnerable are the young.
“We can transform their anger into something constructive for society,” she said.
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