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Alert

Regional correspondent receives death threats

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has said it is very concerned about death threats made against Azzedin Gaiz, 44, correspondent in Khénifra, some 280 kilometres south-east of Rabat, for the national daily "Yawmiyat Ennass".

The journalist made a complaint to the prosecutor's office in Khénifra on 30 January 2007 after he received several anonymous calls over a month telling him to stop writing if he wanted to live. The prosecutor opened an investigation after hearing a recording of one of the threats, which Gaiz had kept on his mobile phone.

"We urge the Moroccan authorities to carry out a thorough and impartial investigation to identify those who made these death threats," the worldwide press freedom organisation said. "It is a new attempt to intimidate a local correspondent who reports on illegal activities and abuse of power on the part of some local figures," it said.

Azzedin Gaiz told Reporters Without Borders that he did not know exactly which articles had brought about the threats. He also made an appeal for "an end to harassment of journalists who only want the good of this country".

He has written several articles about embezzlement, implicating local officials. He also investigated illegal cedar logging by gangsters pillaging the region which has the country's largest forest reserves. Gaiz was also the first journalist to report on the "Anfgou disaster". Anfgou is a deprived village in the Atlas Mountains in which around 30 people, mostly children, froze to death in December 2006.

Gaiz has been working for the Casablanca-based "Yawmiyat Ennass" for nearly four months.