[5][6][7] El País wrote that in an effort to please Spain, the royal cabinet sought to accelerate the normal process of prison transfer—which could take up to two years—and accorded Galván's unwarranted pardon.
[11] On 31 July, internet media platforms Andalus Press and Lakome, revealed that the pardoned included a Spanish serial child rapist who was arrested in September 2011, and sentenced to 30 years in prison in a very controversial case.
[13] Lakome later reported that Daniel Galván successfully reclaimed his passport at the Kenitra court and had left the country on Thursday 1 August 2013, through Morocco's effective land border with Spain in the disputed exclave of Ceuta.
As early as 31 July, there was huge outrage in the Moroccan social media community which culminated by calls for a protest in the evening of 2 August, after the Ramadan iftar, in front of the parliament building in Rabat.
[14][16][17] That evening, thousands of peaceful protesters gathered in front of the building, and were then violently dispersed by Moroccan auxiliary forces, resulting in injuries for activists, reporters and photographers at the scene.
[14] Mohammed VI's palace released a statement in which he denied being "aware of the gravity of the crimes committed by Daniel Galván" and that an investigation would be ordered to determine where the fault and responsibility lies in his decision.
[14] On 6 August, the king held a ceremony—largely publicised locally—in which he was shown greeting and hugging the alleged parents and families of the children abused by Galván.
[21] In a leaked diplomatic cable of the US consulate in Casablanca which detailed the Morocco-Human trafficking report for 2010, it was revealed that Mohammed VI had pardoned in 2006 a convicted French child molester.
[23] A number of these bot accounts were used a few months earlier to promote Mounir Majidi's case in a lawsuit he filed in Paris against Moroccan independent journalist Ahmed Benchemsi.
[16][18][26][27][28] Before Monday 5 August, Morocco's printed press did not cover the scandal nor the strong reactions it was causing on social media websites, with the exception of "Akhbar al-Yawm"–a daily edited by journalist Taoufik Bouachrine.
Reactions of Morocco's officially registered NGOs were almost unanimously limited to restating the position expressed in Mohmmed VI's press releases.
Najat Anouar, president of "Matqich Waldi", an anti-child sexual abuse NGO, stated that the pardon was an exclusive prerogative of the King which he had the discretion of using.
[7] Ali Anouzla, editor-in-chief of the Arabic version of Lakome, which had revealed the scandal, was arrested on 17 September on terrorism charges after he had linked to an El País article containing a video allegedly from AQIM.