Soulaiman RAISSOUNI

Journalist, editor and writer Soulaiman Raissouni continued to face harassment in 2025 through smear and defamation campaigns by pro-government media and individuals following his release from prison on 29 July 2024. He also remained unable to work in Morocco. The increasingly hostile environment in Morocco led to him leaving the country to live in self-exile. 

 Before his release, Raissouni had been arbitrarily detained since May 2020, when he was arrested on charges of ‘sexual assault’ and ‘enforced confinement’, part of a pattern of the Moroccan authorities’ intimidation of dissenting voices through the use of sexual assault charges. Prior to his arrest in 2020, Raissouni had been targeted for surveillance by Pegasus spyware over a two-year period, starting in 2017 (See Case Lists 2021- 2025). 

On one occasion in March, Rassouni and his wife, Moroccan screenwriter Kholuod Mokhtari, were featured in a cartoon riding a paper boat that was raising the Pride flag and heading to England from Tunisia.  The cartoon was accompanied by a long commentary using derogatory language against him, including referring to him as ‘abnormal in his choices and orientations,’ as well as being a ‘drunk.’ On another occasion in September, he was depicted in another cartoon, along with others, inside a ‘Trojan donkey’ and labelled a ‘traitor.’  3

Soulaiman Raissouni, born 5 June 1972, is a prominent Moroccan journalist and editor-in-chief of the now-closed opposition newspaper Akhbar al-Youm. While in prison, Raissouni wrote a prison diary, but this and a draft novel were confiscated in 2022, prompting him to refuse family visits for some weeks.