Ethical error or real threat? Justice has decided on the fate of two French journalists sentenced Tuesday in Paris to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a 10,000 euro fine. The court found them guilty of trying to blackmail the king of Morocco in 2015 by demanding money in return for not publishing an explosive book.
The journalists, whose lawyers immediately appealed, have always denied having made any threat, while acknowledging that they had made an “ethical error” by accepting a proposal for a financial arrangement from Rabat. Already authors in 2012 of a book on Mohammed VI, The predator KingEric Laurent and Catherine Graciet, aged 76 and 48 today, had signed a contract with Le Seuil for a second volume on the same subject.
Financial agreement against abandonment of the book
In the summer of 2015, Eric Laurent, former reporter for Radio France and the Figaro Magazine and author of numerous works, had contacted the private secretariat of the king and a meeting had been organized on August 11 in a Parisian palace with the lawyer Hicham Naciri, emissary of the Kingdom. After this first meeting, Morocco had lodged a complaint in Paris, an investigation had been opened. Two other meetings were then held under police surveillance on August 21 and 27.
Catherine Graciet, in particular author of books on the Maghreb and Libya, was present only at the third meeting, during which the two journalists had signed a financial agreement to the tune of two million euros to abandon the book. At the end, they were arrested with two envelopes each containing 40,000 euros in cash.
“Price of Silence”
For the Paris Criminal Court, the two journalists had a “common approach” and they exerted “pressure” on the emissary by speaking, among other things, of a book which would be “devastating” for the Kingdom. According to the judgment, “the price of silence, that is to say corresponding to the non-publication of the book, not only comes from the two journalists, but the fixed amount also”.
The three meetings had been secretly recorded by the king’s emissary, who had given copies to the investigators. Deemed illegal by the defense, these recordings were at the heart of a procedural battle and the Court of Cassation finally rejected the journalists’ appeals in November 2017.