Moroccan Rapper (l7a9ed) Relaesed from Prison after a Year for Insulting Police

Here is an article from the Associated Press (AP) by way of the Washington Post on the release of the activist rapper Mouad Belghouat. A year in prison certainly makes one reevaluate the benefit of speaking out against corruption. 
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Morocco’s rebel rapper to focus on music, studies after release from prison

By Associated Press

CASABLANCA, Morocco — A Moroccan rapper known for his protest songs said Friday after completing a yearlong prison sentence that he will be concentrating on his studies and improving his music and is unsure about further activism.

Mouad Belghouat’s angry rap songs excoriating the gaps between rich and poor in Morocco provided the soundtrack to the North African kingdom’s Arab Spring protest movement in 2011 that called for social justice and greater democracy.

But while Belghouat, known as El-Haqed or “the enraged,” was in prison, the February 20 movement, as it was known, faded away as popular ire with the state was defused by a string of reforms promulgated by the king.

“I will concentrate more on my studies — I have my high school exams to pass in June,” said a pale, subdued 26-year-old Belghouat to journalists and activists, showing only occasional flashes of his trademark irreverent sense of humor. “I played around a lot before, and in prison I discovered the importance of reading more.”

FULL ARTICLE