RABAT: Morocco has suspended the operations of the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television news channel in Rabat and withdrawn the accreditations of its staff, the communications ministry said Friday.

The ministry said the sanctions followed “numerous failures in (following) the rules of serious and responsible journalism”, while a leading rights group said it was a “backward step” for the kingdom.

The Al-Jazeera bureau chief in Rabat, Palestinian Abdelkader Kharroubi, told AFP that the channel “has always respected the rule of professionalism and neutrality, particularly in Morocco.”

He added that “unfortunately the question of Al-Jazeera is not only in the hands of the communications ministry. Other parties decide at this level.”

Without identifying these “parties”, Kharroubi said the suspension was “a mistake on the part of the Moroccan authorities, a mistake which has nothing to do with us.”

Communications Minister Khalid Naciri told AFP that “a refusal to be objective and impartial systematically tarnishes Morocco’s image.

“We reproach this channel for ignoring the main principles and transmitting a caricature of Moroccan reality.”

A government official who declined to be named said the authorities took exception “to the way Al-Jazeera handles the issues of Islamists and Western Sahara.”

More than 2,000 Islamists have been arrested and sentenced in Morocco since the Casablanca bombings of May 16, 2003, when more than 40 people were killed in an attack by Islamist extremists.

A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara was annexed by Morocco after settlers withdrew in 1975. The move was violently opposed by separatist Polisario guerrillas until the United Nations brokered a ceasefire in 1991.

Polisario wants a UN-organised referendum that would give the Sahrawi people three choices: attachment to Morocco, independence or autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.

Morocco backs the option of broad autonomy for the territory, but rejects any notion of independence for Western Sahara.

Amina Bouayach, head of the Moroccan Human Rights Organisation, said the move “shows Morocco's reluctance to continue a process of opening up, particularly as concerns freedom of the press.”

“Unlike Algeria and Tunisia, where the Al-Jazeera bureaus have been closed for a long time, Morocco appeared as an exception,” she said. “With this suspension one can talk of a step backwards.”

The head of the national press union, Younes Moujahid, said it would publish a statement on Saturday.

A number of Moroccan journalists have been jailed and newspapers closed in recent months.

The country has steadily declined in the annual press freedom index of media watchdog Reporters sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders - RSF), standing at 135th on the list of 178 this year.

Al-Jazeera, sponsored by Qatar, has frequently upset other Arab states since it was founded in 1996.

In recent years it has fallen foul of Egypt, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, and in 2006 sparked a major diplomatic row between Qatar and Tunisia. — AFP