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 Mohamed Mounir, known as Gnawi, was arrested on Nov. 1 and
confessed to cursing the police in a live social media feed a
week earlier, saying he had been drunk. He can still appeal
Monday's sentence.
He told the judge he had recorded the live feed because he felt
he had been "mistreated by police" earlier that day when they
stopped him and checked his identity papers.
"This trial has nothing to do with freedom of expression. This
is a penal code matter," police lawyer Abdelfattah Yatribi said.
However, Mounir's lawyer, Mohamed Sadkou, said the authorities
may have focused on the rapper because of a song he and two
other singers had recorded that appeared to criticize the king.
The three released the song "Aacha Chaab" - "long live the
people" - on YouTube on Oct. 29, gaining 15 million views, with
Mounir's lines in the song focusing on his usual themes of
social justice and corruption.
But one of the other rappers included lines that accused the
king of oppression and insulted his religious role in Morocco.
The song and the other rappers were not mentioned during
Monday's trial.
Mounir's lawyers said he should have been tried under a separate
set of laws governing the press and publishing that do not allow
imprisonment.
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The prosecutor rejected this argument, however, saying Mounir was
neither a journalist nor a publisher. Yatribi asked the judge to add
the charge of "insulting god" to the case against Mounir.
Some of Mounir's fans gathered outside the court in Sale near Rabat.
"Gnawi is innocent. We want him free. He only speaks about the
rights of the people. He insulted the police because he was under
the impact of alcohol," said one of his supporters, Mohamed Nouari.
Amnesty International issued a statement denouncing the verdict and
urging Gnawi's immediate release.
"Expressing peaceful criticism of the police or the authorities is
not a crime. International law protects the right to freedom of
expression - even when the opinions shared are shocking or
offensive," Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa
Director Heba Morayef was quoted as saying.
Morocco, a constitutional monarchy where the king holds sweeping
powers, had widespread protests during the Arab Spring in 2011, but
reformed its constitution to allow more political rights. Protests
have periodically broken out since.
(Reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi; Editing by Angus McDowall, Giles
Elgood and Sonya Hepinstall)
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