Face Facebook Profile = Jail Time?: Apparently in Morocco this is the case. I count my blessings that I live in the USA and not Morocco. This story reminds me of an old Hitchcock movie with Jimmie Stewart: “The Man Who Knew too Much” which took place in Morocco.

Fouad Mourtada, a 26-year old IT engineer has been held under arrest in Casablanca since February 5th for “villainous practices linked to the alleged theft of the identity” of King Mohammed VI’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, on facebook. He did it as a joke. It looks like a joke gone terribly wrong. He faces up to 5 years in the slammer for this little stunt.

According to Fouad “I was arrested on the morning of Tuesday by two individuals who embarked me on a vehicle then blindfolded my eyes with a black band. After about fifteen minutes, they changed vehicles, then took me along to some building to undergo an interrogation there. I was persecuted, beaten up, slapped, spat on and insulted. I was also slammed for hours with a tool on the head and the legs…”.

Fouad Mourtada could face five years in prison “for having done what thousands of people throughout the world do everyday: Create a profile of a celebrity or a star on Facebook,” his lawyer Ali Ammar said, adding: “This is a cultural problem. This is the first time that a Moroccan poses as a very important personality on the Internet. This is already a common practice in Europe and the United States.”

You can read more of the unbelievable details of this story here and here. There is also a group started on facebook that has over 1725 members around this issue.

It is worthy also to note that there are many spoof celebrity profiles on facebook. There are several fake profiles for Bill Gates, Paris Hilton, George Bush & Osama Bin Laden, etc. Facebook normally does a pretty good job of eliminating these fake profiles rather quickly.

So a word of caution for our international readers here… just be yourself on facebook and don’t try to impress people with your “Fake Facebook Profile”; it will keep you out of jail. Leave the spoof comedy writing to the brilliant people at The Onion.

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