This year’s second and third place winners of the Boston Marathon were both Moroccan!  Although Kenyan Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot won first place, Abderrahime Bouramdane of Fez came in second, with Khalid El Boumlili finishing in third place.  Both men are Olympic hopefuls.

Unfortunately,  no Moroccan women placed in the top group this year.

Have you been to this site yet? I am, of course, biased, but please - if you check it out and enjoy it, post a link on your blog!

Although I posted reactions to Fouad Mourtada’s release at Global Voices last night (a story broken by bloggers and then, Global Voices Advocacy), several more English-language bloggers have expressed their thoughts on the matter since.

Hisham of Al Miraat shares my sentiment; that Fouad Mourtada’s release is only a start:

 The news from Morocco is a real sigh of relief for many bloggers, and HR activists who campaigned hard to make the case of Fouad known and widely published. But this is not a victory for democracy nor for HR (as the Moroccan writer Laila Lalami rightly pointed out on her blog) because the institutions of the monarchy have acted in clear subservience to the central power. And I don’t think that one can feel comfortable yet in a country where people are being imprisoned and later released according to the will and whims of one single person. Anyway, Fouad is now a free man. Until Mourtada’s arrest, Moroccans have enjoyed reasonably free access to the internet compared to the regional standards. They rightly spotted the danger of imprisoning Mourtada and they succesfully named and shamed the Moroccan government for what it did. Throughout the Arab World, though, many bloggers and other prisoners of opinion still languish in prisons sometimes without due process or any legal recourse.

The Arabist feels that Fouad’s release is better late than never:

 The Moroccan who was jailed for putting up a fake profile of Prince Moulay Rashid has been freed. This is great news, and while it should have never gotten to this, better late than never. I suppose the king wanted to make sure the message got across that the royal family is a no-go area for satirists and critics.

I will continue to post reactions, both here and at Global Voices Online, as I find them.  I can’t wait for mainstream news to pick up the story!

Fouad Mourtada has been released from prison after serving only 25 days of his sentence.

Mourtada, who was arrested on February 5 for impersonating Prince Moulay Rachid of Morocco, then sentenced on February 22 to three years in prison and $1,000 fine, has received an outpouring of support from bloggers around the world. Earlier today, I wrote a post for Global Voices Online which highlighted many of Mourtada’s supporters.

I am so happy for Mourtada’s family! His sister has kept in close touch with many bloggers, writing in both French and English and sharing news about Fouad. Although what Fouad did was stupid, he did not deserve his punishment…and now justice has, in a way, been served.

This week, I will be traveling to Miami with some other Global Voices folk to attend the ifocus WeMedia conference (see interview here).  I will also be launching my own website/blog (finally!) - which is not to say this one will become defunct…I plan to leave it up and eventually import all of the old posts to my new blog - but from now on, I will be blogging at jilliancyork.com - so please, change your links!

Today, Tuesday, February 19, is the fourteenth day of Fouad Mourtada’s imprisonment. He committed the error, but not the crime, of creating a Facebook account in the name of Prince Moulay Rachid. This account contained no insults against the Prince nor was it the instrument of any swindling attempts. His name was immediately given wide publicity by the authorities, in breach of the presumption of innocence he’s supposed to enjoy, and he alleges having been beaten and mishandled during his arrest. He initially had trouble finding a lawyer willing to defend him. The trial, due to begin on February 15, has been postponed to February 22, while his habeas corpus application has been rejected.

For this reason, The Morocco Report will be on strike on Tuesday, 19 February as a gesture of solidarity with Fouad Mourtada and the other prisoners of opinion currently jailed in Morocco.

Moroccan Fouad Mourtada has been arrested in Casablanca for creating a false profile on Facebook of a member of Morocco’s royal family.

His family has created a website: Help Fouad, to get his story internationally recognized.

Although this should come as no surprise, I find it absolutely deplorable that anyone be arrested for a mere prank, even if said prank is completely taboo in Morocco - sure, Fouad should’ve known better, but give the guy a break!  Five years in jail, for what?  What will that prove?  That the royal family can’t take a joke?

Morocco is getting dangerously close to the level of censorship its Middle Eastern neighbors (okay, not neighbors per se) practice.  Next thing you know, they’ll be arresting bloggers.

Please post about this, share Fouad’s story, and get this out there for people to read.  Check out Global Voices Advocacy soon for a post on the subject by Sami ben Gharbia.

Global Voices, in partnership with Reuters, has launched a new site that I’ll be working on; Voices without Votes is a project of Global Voices commissioned by Reuters.

Americans are the only ones who can elect the United States president, but the 2008 election offers a unique opportunity to harvest global commentary on America’s politics and foreign policy and how it affects the rest of the world.

Voices Without Votes highlights conversations in non-American blogs and citizen media, with emphasis on the regions covered by Global Voices: Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and the Middle East.

Please: if you are a blogger in that category or spot any posts that would fit Voices without Votes, please submit them here or e-mail them to me at: themoroccoreport@gmail.com

Having read both volumes of the book, I was thrilled when I heard that the film was coming to Boston.  Hamza and I ventured out into the relative warmth of this weekend to find the cinema at Kendall Square in Cambridge (not an easy feat).  Although it cost $9.50 for a matinee (yuck!), it was well worth every penny.  Persepolis is a rare gem in today’s cinematic universe.  The story leaps off the pages, music and dialogue giving the story drama that the graphic novel lacked.

My only complaint, and a very minor one at that, is that the subtitles were white on white (fortunately, I was able to half-listen, half-read, such is my level of French comprehension).

I highly recommend seeing Persepolis on the big screen; Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel does not do her story, or her artistic talent, justice.

Exciting news this morning - the Agence France-Presse (AFP) published an article on blogging in Morocco and as it turns out, Moroccan bloggers have far more freedom than their North African and Middle Eastern counterparts (not to mention far more blogs than the former).

As a Morocco-related blogger for the past two-odd years, I would have to agree with the article - Moroccan bloggers really do have significant freedom in what they choose to write about, as evidenced by some of the posts seen at maroc-blogs.com.

Needless to say, congratulations blogoma!  May you continue to generate interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking posts, and may the freedom to express your ideas continue.