79-year-old Moroccan rights minister, Mohamed Ziane, who became an outspoken government critic, has been handed a three-year jail sentence on Wednesday, February 23, after being found guilty of some charges levelled against him.

Ziane was tried last year after he accused the kingdom’s security services of faking a video purporting to show him in a compromising situation with a married woman in a hotel room.

The former Minister accused the head of the police and Morocco’s domestic security forces, Abdelatif Hammouchi, of faking the footage which caused a controversy.

Ziane who faced a total of 11 charges, including “contempt of public officials and the judiciary”, defamation, adultery and sexual harassment, had also claimed they were political.

A Rabat court on Wednesday February 23 “sentenced Mr Ziane to three years in prison and a fine of 5,000 dirhams (about $530)”, months after the country’s interior ministry filed a complaint accusing him of criminally “disseminating false accusations”.

His lawyer Amal Khalfi told AFP “we don’t yet know the details of the verdict. We don’t know which charges were upheld”.

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