Ali Anouzla (Arabic: علي أنوزلا; born in Agadir, Morocco) is a Moroccan journalist, known for his critical articles of King Mohammed VI's rule.
On 17 September 2013, Ali Anouzla was arrested in a raid against his home in Rabat, officially for having linked to an El País article which contained a video allegedly posted by AQIM and hosted on the website of the Spanish newspaper.
[9] Ali Anouzla started his career in pan-Arab Saudi-owned newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, he then briefly worked in Libya for the local press agency before returning to Morocco in the late 1990.
After working for sometime as the Morocco correspondent for al-Sharq al-Awsat,[10] Ali founded -along with renowned journalist Taoufik Bouachrine- his first newspaper al-Jarid al-Oukhra in 2004 which was issued weekly.
In 2006, al-Jarid Al-Oukhra was shut down and Anouzla joined Rachid Niny and Taoufik Bouachrine and a host of other Moroccan Journalists, to found al-Massae, a daily which was to become a huge success.
[14] As the pressure of the public opinion was mounting, the monarch later retracted the pardon but only after the convicted child sex offender left prison and went to Spain with an expired passport.
[17] Additionally, a governmental crisis happened while the King was away when Hamid Chabat head of the Istiqlal party decided to retract from the cabinet's coalition, leaving the country in a political stalemate for several months.
[19] Lakome demonstrated that Mounir Majidi (a close friend and personal secretary of Mohammed VI of whom he manages his financial holdings) had links to these companies through a complex net of FVCs.
[19] British businesswoman Vanessa Branson, French designer Frederic Scholl and James Howell (adviser to Britain's ex-PM Margaret Thatcher), all of whom regular visitor to Marrakech also figured among the beneficiaries.
"[21] In June 2009, Anouzla faced an unusual sentence by a Rabat court which demanded that he ceases the publication of content from the archive of Morocco's reconciliation commission (an organisation created by Mohammed VI and tasked with enquiring into alleged human-rights abuses during the years when Hassan II was in power).
[25] It also contained a narrative from Khelli Henna Ould Rachid (head of the Royal council for the Saharan Affairs) in which he confessed the occurrence of war-crimes during Morocco's fight against the Polisario's Guerilla movement, as well as ill-treatment of Sahrawis by Moroccan officials before the Western Sahara conflict broke out in 1976.
[24] On 23 December 2008, Anouzla was sentenced to a fine of 160,000 dirhams (~$17,000) in a defamation case which opposed him to Khalil El Hachemi-Idrissi, the director and founder of the pro-regime French-speaking daily Ajourd'hui le Maroc.
[27] These comments came after al-Jarida al-Oula covered a story in which an In-Law of Mohammed VI (Hassan El Yaakoubi) shot on a policeman -injuring him in the thigh- who had stopped him to register a traffic offence.
[31] On 27 August 2009, after Mohammed VI had cancelled a planned trip to Casablanca and did not attend a ceremonial religious event of the Ramadan;[32] Bouchra Dou wrote an article in al-Jarida al-Oula in which she revealed that the monarch has been allegedly under a treatment against asthma and allergy.
But it took a severe financial blow when a contracting advertising company decided to boycott it two days after Anouzla was heard by the police in connection to the article about Mohammed VI's health.
[36] It was specifically directed against Mohammed VI,[35][36] criticising his politics, his involvement in business, his circle of friends, the Mawazine festival (founded and backed by one of the King's friends Mounir Majidi) and even quoted passages from leaked US diplomatic cables, in which they describe Morocco's business scene as being controlled by only three people: Mohammed VI, Mounir Majidi and Fouad Ali El Himma.
[11][38] Anouzla's home was raided on Tuesday 17 September 2013 on orders from Rabat's prosecutor Hassan Daki who issued this statement:[39] “Following the publication by the online newspaper Lakome of a video attributed to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which includes an unequivocal and direct incitement to commit terrorist acts in the Kingdom of Morocco, the prosecutor general has given instructions to the criminal investigation police to arrest the head of the online newspaper for investigation.”[2] In the same morning, offices of Lakome.com were searched, computers seized and its employees questioned.
[53] In May 2014, it was revealed that Morocco's ambassador to the United States, Rachad Bouhlal, had asked the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), to strip Anouzla of a journalistic award the organization had given them.