Morocco: Man gets 6 months for raising Israeli flag

42-year-old charged with "undermining national flag" after attempting to draw attention of local authorities, report says.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Israeli flags 300 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Israeli flags 300
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
A Moroccan court on Friday sentenced a local resident to six months in jail for raising an Israeli flag over his home, pan-Arab Al Arabiya news channel reported.
The 42-year-old, Mohammed Jadidi, was attempting to draw the attention of local authorities after his house was disconnected from the electricity and water grids.
Jadidi was charged with "sacrilege" and "undermining the national flag," according to the report.
Under pressure to reform after the upheavals last year around the Middle East, Morocco for the first time elected an Islamist-led government which has set about reversing what it said were repressive policies under the previous authorities.
In the strongest signal yet of the new approach, Morocco's King Mohammed issued pardons last week to the leaders of a group called Salafia Jihadia which officials had accused of being linked to violent Islamist militant attacks.
"We are free thanks to the Arab Spring," said one of the group's leaders, Hassan Kettani, who had been serving a 20-year jail sentence until his release in February.
"In this context, our country carried out reforms to avoid the kind of tragedies that happened in other Arab countries ... Part of the peaceful resolution that our country has chosen is to resolve the issue of prisoners of conscience," he said.