association from 100,000 to 60,000 DH. Thus, the appeals court left al-Ahdath to pay fines and damages totaling 350,000 DH, up from the 240,000 DH imposed by the lower court. The appeals court trying al-Ayyam (case 93/67/05) maintained the 12,000 DH fine against publication director Noureddine Miftah and increased the damages from 120,000 DH to 250,000 DH, for a total of 262,000 DH. Thus, the appeals judgments narrowed but did not close the gap between the hefty damages imposed on TelQuel and those imposed on the other publications. Like the lower court, the appeals court that tried TelQuel did not document the basis for the damages it decided to award Jaïdi. In the second recent libel conviction of TelQuel, the Casablanca Court of First Instance on August 15, 2005 awarded damages of one million DH to plaintiff Halima Assali and imposed on TelQuel director Ahmed Benchemsi and editor Karim Boukhari suspended two-month prison sentences and fines of 25,000 DH apiece. Assali is a pro-government member of parliament whom Boukhari had ridiculed in a gossipy column published in a July 2005 issue.10 The column did not name her but its subject was evident to readers. It described her as someone from the Middle Atlas countryside who was elected to parliament despite a lack of credentials for the position, and who rarely attended parliamentary sessions. The column also called her a "former cheikha, a woman of song and of pleasure(s)," thereby making innuendo, in the eyes of some observers, about her moral character. Both Assali and TelQuel appealed the lower-court ruling, with the deputy seeking higher damages. Before the Casablanca Court of Appeals, Assali stated that she had never been a cheikha and that the article had hurt her, a married mother of two, and caused her to avoid social functions out of embarrassment.11 The defendants claimed that neither the label "cheikha" nor any of the other phrases in the column were libelous and that the column fell well within the bounds of a familiar style of column-writing that was "caustic but not insulting." On December 29, the Appeals Court upheld the conviction and the suspended prison sentences for Benchemsi and Boukhari, but reduced the damages owed to Assali from one million to 800,000 DH, a sum that still made it one of the largest libel judgments ever awarded in Morocco. The court did not explain how it assessed the value of the harm sustained by Assali. An appeal of the conviction by the defendants to the Court of Cassation is currently pending. In recent weeks, Assali stated in writing that she would not seek payment by TelQuel of the award due her. Al-Ayyam convicted for writing about the harems of past monarchs Al-Ayyam, convicted along with TelQuel for libeling Touria Jaïdi (see above), faced an even heavier judgment in another case emanating from a report in its issue of November 6, 2005. The lead article, entitled, "Secrets of the Palace Harem among Three Kings," was based partly on an interview that reporter Maria Moukrim had conducted with François Cleret, a French personal physician of the late Mohamed V, who ruled Morocco from 1956 until 1961. It described the