The Public Prosecutor at the Casablanca Court of First Instance announced the release of Ali Lmrabet, following an investigation into the acts attributed to him, in accordance with the procedural safeguards set out by law.
In a statement, the prosecutor’s office said that after reviewing the case file and its supporting documents, it decided to release the suspect pending completion of the investigation.
The prosecutor’s office added that appropriate legal action will be determined once the investigation is fully concluded.
Lmrabet was arrested on July 12 at Tangier’s Ibn Battouta airport, which the same prosecutor’s office had earlier explained was carried out on the basis of several outstanding search notices issued against him over suspected offenses.
Those notices stemmed from a series of digital publications that complainants say contained defamatory and slanderous content targeting individuals and institutions.
The case’s outcome to date sits at odds with the narrative pushed by some press-freedom advocacy groups in the arrest’s immediate aftermath, which cast the matter as judicial harassment before any of the procedural facts – now confirmed by the prosecutor’s own statements – had been established.
