The Diplomat
The Moroccan authorities briefly detained four Spanish journalists from La Sexta’s ‘Salvados’ programme in Tangiers yesterday, and “invited them to leave the country” as soon as possible, according to Efe.
The team, led by its director Fernando González ‘Gonzo’, was carrying out documentation and pre-production work on the industrial accident that cost the lives of 29 people (mostly women) last February, when the textile factory in which they worked, which was located in a basement, suddenly flooded.
The journalists were scheduled to meet with family and friends of the victims, but even before they met with them, they were surprised by the police in a café and asked to leave the premises and go immediately to their hotel, with instructions to leave the country.
The reason for the detention was apparently that they did not have a filming permit, which is required in Morocco, but not for pre-production work.
This is not the first time that Morocco has expelled journalists, especially when they deal with conflictive or sensitive issues, the reason always being that they lacked the required filming permits or had entered without declaring their status as journalists.
