Moroccan journalist Soulaimane Raissouni, imprisoned since 2020, is on a new hunger strike to protest against the confiscation of a letter addressed to a Ukrainian writer, his family told AFP on Monday March 4. The prison where he is detained, near Casablanca, indicated that it had the right to control “letters sent and received by detainees”.
Former editor-in-chief of the daily Akhbar Al-Yaoum, Mr. Raissouni, 51, was sentenced to five years in prison for “sexual assault,” a fact he never admitted.
He began a hunger strike on Thursday “to contest the seizure by the judicial authorities of a response to a letter from the Ukrainian novelist Andrei Kurkov,” a member of his family told AFP, on condition of anonymity. This was sent as part of a campaign by the writers' association PEN International, this source added.
" Harassment "
“The [prison] administration, after consulting the content of the correspondence sent by the inmate to a foreign party, noted that it contained insulting and defamatory remarks and false information,” the prison said on Saturday, adding that it had “seized” the mail. Mr. Raissouni's hunger strike "has no link with the conditions of his detention, but rather comes at the instigation of foreign parties," said this source, without further details.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), based in New York, said Monday it was “shocked” by the “harassment” of Mr. Raissouni, “deprived of the legitimate right to send letters.”
The Moroccan journalist regularly wrote editorials criticizing the authorities. His supporters believe that he was the subject of a “political trial”, which the authorities refute, and are calling for his release. In 2021, he stopped eating for one hundred and twenty-two days to protest his detention.
