Hajar Raissouni

Hajar Raissouni (; born 1991) is a Moroccan independent journalist. In 2019, she was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison for allegedly having an illegal abortion and sex out of wedlock, though she was later pardoned by King Mohammed VI.

Early life and career Hajar was born in 1991 in Larache, Morocco. She grew up in a conservative family. Her father was a farmer and her mother is a housewife. She received a traditional religious education and chose to wear the hijab as a teenager. After getting her baccalaureate, she moved to Salé in 2009 and enrolled at the Faculty of Sciences in Rabat. After a bachelor's degree in mathematics, she changed her path and chose to be a journalist. She enrolled in law school and then in political science while publishing her first articles in Al Ahdath Al Maghribia, a left-wing Arabic-language daily. At the time, Hajar was close to the (MUR) created by her uncle Ahmad al-Raysuni. She was hired at Attajdid, the daily newspaper of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) where she worked for two years.

During 2015, Hajar distanced herself from the movement and then left Attajdid in 2016. In Akhbar Al Yaoum, where she works with her uncle Soulaimane Raissouni, she writes as much on the demonstrations of unemployed graduates as on the crisis of medical students or the reform of national education. Recently, she was interested in street children and was preparing a survey on the Christian community resulting from sub-Saharan immigration in Morocco. The police had been investigating the clinic for abortions.

Raissouni and her partner Rifaat Al Amine were both sentenced to a year in prison,

Controversy Raissouni's family and supporters believe the accusation and sentence were politically motivated. though he has spoken out in condemnation of the political campaign to change the laws that were used to condemn Hajar Raissouni.

The case stirred significant controversy in Morocco. The Democratic League for Women's Rights organized protests in support of Raissouni,

Pardon On October 17, 2019, King Muhammad VI gave Hajar Raissouni, her partner Rifaat Al Amine, her gynecologist Dr. Jamal Belkeziz, and the second doctor and the assistant from the clinic, a royal pardon. An official statement from the Moroccan Ministry of Justice explained: "In the context of His Majesty the King's compassion and mercy, His Majesty's sought to protect the future of the two fiancées that intend to start a family in accordance with the rule of law, in spite of the mistake that they may have made, which led to legal prosecution."

The move was simultaneously welcomed and criticized by rights groups, including The Coalition For Women In Journalism which noted despite being great news for Hajar, the pardon did not do justice to the issues that women journalists are tackling in the country. "Hajar is only free because of the pardon and not because it was recognized that the state had no business sticking its nose into her personal life. Where she has been released because of the extreme backlash the country had to face, we have to think of situations where a journalist may not hold the same kind of attention in the news," the organization said.

Aftermath Raissouni's case sparked the Kharija Ala L'Qanun or Outlaws campaign, an ongoing campaign for the legalization of abortion and sex outside marriage in Morocco. One of the campaign's aims is the reform of abortion laws in Morocco, which currently only permit an abortion if woman's life at risk.