Two French journalists accused of trying to blackmail Moroccan King Mohammed VI have denied any wrongdoing and insisted they were victims of an elaborate trap devised by palace officials to discredit them, reports FRANCE 24.
Éric Laurent and Catherine Graciet were arrested last Thursday as they left a Paris restaurant where they had met a representative for the Moroccan king.
Laurent is alleged to have demanded three million euros, in a call made to the Moroccan royal palace in July, in return for not publishing a book that the writers said contained “apocalyptic” information about Mohammed VI’s regime.
Éric Dupond-Moretti, a French lawyer representing the king, told FRANCE 24 on Friday that the pair signed a contract not to publish during Thursday’s meeting, and left with a down-payment of 80,000 euros in cash.
They were arrested immediately afterwards “with the proceeds of their crime in their pockets”, the lawyer said.
But according to the two journalists, the blackmail allegation is the latest in a long series of attempts by the Moroccan establishment to silence them and to prevent the publication of their book, due to hit the shelves in January 2016.
In separate interviews with French newspapers, both writers insisted that it was Morocco that had offered them the cash and that they had decided to accept the offer “for personal reasons”.
Graciet told Le Parisien that Laurent had contacted the royal palace in July because their book contained so much damaging information they were “obliged to ask the regime for an interview so that the palace could tell its side of the story”.