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Spanish photojournalist Judith Prat was expelled, Tuesday June 11, by the Moroccan authorities from Laayoune, Paris-based NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Wednesday.
According to Europa Press, Prat was visiting the city of Dakhla, where she conducted a photojournalism training that was attended by pro-Polisario jouranlists. RSF reported that the photojournalist was forced to leave Laayoune for Agadir after she was planning to spend the night there at the house of one of the journalists who participated to the training.
«When I arrived at the bus station from Dakhla, I was picked up by some journalists and had dinner at one of their homes», she told RSF. Prat said that once there, police nocked on the door and «forced [her] to get in one of their four vehicles».
Prat said that she was taken to the bus station, where she was «interrogated and questioned» about her relation with these journalists, reported RSF which denounced the photojournalist’s expulsion.
The latter came as Reporters Without Borders presented, Tuesday, in Spain a report on the work of journalists in the Sahara. Entitled «Western Sahara, a Desert for Journalists», the report described the area as a «veritable news black hole that has become a no-go zone for journalists».
RSF alleged that Morocco «applies a quasi-systematic policy of turning back the foreign press trying to enter Western Sahara and of harshly punishing the local citizen-journalists who strive to give a version of the news differing from the official line, through social networks».
«The territory, being neither at war nor at peace, is nowadays covered by foreign media only from the humanitarian angle», Alfonso Armada, president of RSF-Spain said Tuesday in Madrid.
