Man jailed 5 yrs for imitating voice of king’s wife

Morocco hunger-striker vows to protest until ban lifted

RABAT, Oct 29, (AFP): A Moroccan man has been jailed for five years for impersonating King Mohammed VI’s wife in a telephone call to congratulate a Moroccan boxer on a title win, a newspaper said.

Police said the man, identified only by his first name, Khaled, recently got out of prison after serving time for trying to swindle people by imitating public figures.

Last week, Morocco’s police authority revealed that “a suspect has usurped the identity” of Princess Salma, the king’s wife.

It said the suspect “imitated her voice during a telephone conversation with Mohammed Rabii ... in a bid to swindle him”.

On Oct 15, welterweight Rabii capped the perfect end to a season by claiming gold in front of a packed house in Doha, on the final night of the world boxing championships.

Rabii, the first Arab to take gold in the history of the championships, was named the World Series of Boxing’s boxer of the year earlier this month.

He later said in a television interview that he had been congratulated personally by Salma.

That caught the attention of police, who contacted Rabii and got Khaled’s telephone number from him.

The verdict was handed down Monday night by a court in Casablanca, three days after the impersonator was arrested, independent Akhbar al-Yaoum newspaper said on its website.

In September 2014, another Moroccan was jailed for three years for usurping the identity of the king.

Meanwhile, a hunger-striking Moroccan academic and rights activist has said he will continue his protest until authorities lift a travel ban against him.

“I will continue until I obtain my rights as a citizen and my family is left alone, because the situation is becoming unbearable,” Maati Monjib told AFP late Wednesday at the office of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) in Rabat.

The 55-year-old historian has been on hunger strike since October 7 after Casablanca airport authorities prevented him from travelling to Norway where he had been due to attend a seminar.

The authorities said the ban was due to “financial violations” while Monjib headed the Ibn Rushd Institute.

The research institute closed in 2014 after the authorities banned several of its activities including holding meetings between seculars and Islamists.

“I want my right to freedom of movement back” and to be “free to leave and return to Morocco when I want,” Monjib said.

“The interior ministry must put an end to the continuous harassment of my family, which has been ongoing for almost two years and has increased since I was elected head of the Freedom Now association” for the defence of press freedom, he said.

More than 50 Moroccan rights organisations and some 1,000 journalists, academics and activists have signed a petition in support of Monjib.

A doctor following Monjib’s case on Saturday said he was suffering from repeated heart palpitations and “severe headaches, symptoms that show his neurones have started to be affected” by the hunger strike.