The Marrakech Court of First Instance has sentenced Said Ait Mehdi, the head of the Coordination of Earthquake Victims of Al-Houz, to three months in prison. Alongside the prison term, Ait Mehdi was fined 500 dirhams and ordered to pay 10,000 dirhams in compensation to the civil party involved. In a related development, the court acquitted three other defendants who had been prosecuted in the same case. The legal proceedings against Ait Mehdi began last December when the prosecutor at the Marrakech Court of First Instance decided to detain him, leading to his incarceration in the local prison of Loudia. Ait Mehdi was accused of several crimes, such as spreading false information to harm people's private lives, damaging reputations, insulting public officials and organizations, attacking an official while they were doing their job, and encouraging others to commit crimes using electronic media. The other defendants were accused of «insulting a public official.» The arrest of the four individuals followed a complaint lodged by an authority officer at the «Tadafalt» village in the Ighil community, along with the successor of the Ajoukak commander.
