19 Facts About Ali Anouzla

Ali Anouzla 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 Pais article which contained a video allegedly posted by AQIM and hosted on the website of the Spanish newspaper.

Ali Anouzla was later charged with "Knowingly providing material assistance to terrorists acts".

Ali Anouzla was born in Agadir into a Sahrawi family originally from Guelmim.

Ali Anouzla's father was a member of the Moroccan Army of Liberation which operated in the south of the country to oust the Spanish from the region.

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.

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.

Ali Anouzla faced systematic campaigns aimed at discrediting him in the eyes of the Moroccan public opinion.

The editorials of Ali Anouzla were notorious for their criticism of the Moroccan regime and their unequivocal criticism of King Mohammed VI, which is unusual in Morocco.

In June 2009, Ali 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.

Ali Anouzla responded that the archive of the commission was a property of the Moroccan people and the publication of its content is a basic right of access to information.

Ali Anouzla later appealed the decision, which he described as being legally baseless, since the documents he published were not classified.

On 23 December 2008, Anouzla was sentenced to a fine of 160,000 dirhams 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.

Ali Anouzla was never summoned to assist to his trial and during the hearings his lawyer was threatened by the Judge that he'd be prosecuted for the same offence as his client.

Ali Anouzla was sued by ex-Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in April 2009.

Ali Anouzla had published an editorial in al-Jarida al-Oula in which he described countries of the Maghreb region as dictatorships and that Gaddafi in particular dilapidated the wealth of his country and rules through ruthless oppression.

On 5 May 2010, Ali Anouzla announced the suspension of al-Jarida al-Oula due to financial difficulties.

Ali Anouzla stopped writing in the paper a few months before it shut down, as he was serving his 1-year suspended prison sentence.

Ali Anouzla's arrest sparked immediate outrage on social media outlets.