blames Moroccan authorities generally or specific officials or agencies. The columns cited in the verdict, for example, contain numerous references to the torture he says is practiced against suspects at Témara, a facility frequently criticized by human rights organizations as the site of abusive interrogations, but whose existence authorities have repeatedly denied. Nini, 41, is being held at Oukacha prison in Casablanca. He is not allowed to have paper and writing instruments, a Casablanca lawyer, Reda Oulamine, who visited him on November 30, told Human Rights Watch. All countries have an interest in providing recourses for people who believe that a news organ has damaged their reputation or, in some cases, gravely offended them. However, to balance this interest against the public interest in press freedom, allegations of defamation, offenses, and insults should not be handled as criminal matters. Defamation should be handled as a civil matter, in which courts may impose monetary damages or propose apologies or corrections, rather than impose prison terms and fines. There is a particular duty to ensure free expression concerning commentary on public officials. To harmonize its penal code with the freedom-of-expression guarantees provided by the new constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Morocco ratified in 1979, Morocco should eliminate prison terms as punishments for the offenses for which Nini is incarcerated and end the criminalization of defamation, especially of public officials, Human Rights Watch said. “The imprisonment of Rachid Nini dramatizes the need to close the gap between Morocco’s reformist new constitution and its laws that criminalize speech,” Whitson said. “His continued imprisonment calls into question the government’s commitment to guarantee free expression.” Previous Convictions Nini has been convicted of criminal charges before for his writing. In March 2008 the Rabat Court of First Instance convicted him for a column he wrote describing a “gay wedding party” in the city of Ksar el-Kabir, in which he said that the town’s homosexuals included a prosecutor. Although Nini did not name the prosecutor, all four prosecutors attached to the Ksar el-Kabir court filed a defamation complaint, and the Rabat court fined Nini 6 million dirhams ($720,000). He had not paid the fine at the time of his arrest three years later. On November 16, 2009, the Casablanca Court of First Instance sentenced Nini and a fellow journalist at al-Masa’ to prison terms and fines for publishing an article in August 2009 that allegedly contained “false information” regarding the implication of a judicial official in a drugtrafficking ring. An appeals court ruling in January 2010 eliminated the prison terms but maintained fines of 20,000 dirhams (US$2,400) against the two men. The New Constitution Morocco’s constitution adopted by popular referendum on July 1, unlike the previous constitution, contains an affirmation of press freedom. Article 28 says, “Press freedom is guaranteed and cannot be limited by any form of prior censorship. Everyone has the right of