The General Federation of Arab Journalists received a letter from the National Press Union of Morocco stating that the Algerian authorities were conducting investigations on the Moroccan press charged with covering the Arab Summit.
The members of the delegation were detained for a very long time in an office under investigation before the Algerian security authorities decided at the airport to strip the members of the delegation of their professional status and confiscate work equipment, preventing them from performing their duties of reporting news on television and by photography, and only allowing them to enter Algerian territory as tourists.
The delegation then headed to the place where permits and accreditation to journalists to cover the summit’s events were granted.
They were surprised by security instructions based on which the accreditation to any Moroccan journalist would be refused. At this point, the Moroccan delegation left Algerian territory on the first flight to Morocco.
The General Federation of Arab Journalists expressed its “full solidarity with the demands of the Moroccan Journalists’ Union and its condemnation of the handling of a press delegation from a sister State of Algeria, which forced the delegation to leave Algeria and not to carry out their journalistic duties in covering the Arab Summit”.