A prominent Moroccan journalist and government critic has been released from police custody three days after his arrest over defamation charges, the public prosecutor has said.

Ali Lmrabet, a 66-year-old leading figure in Morocco’s independent press, was arrested at Tangier airport on Sunday after arriving from Spain, where has been based for years. He was released on Wednesday after public pressure for his release from several media rights groups, including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

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“I only practice journalism. I don’t engage in politics,” he told RSF after his release. “The fact that I practice independent journalism seems to bother a lot of people.”

An investigation against Lmrabet remains open, according to the public prosecutor, who said the journalist is being probed over “defamatory and insulting remarks against individuals and institutions”.

RSF welcomed his release and called on Moroccan authorities to dismiss the case against him. It remains unclear whether Lmrabet is now allowed to leave the country.

Lmrabet previously published weekly publications Demain Magazine and the Arabic-language Doumane in Morocco before both were banned in 2003 after he was convicted of insulting the king, among other charges.

He was then sentenced to three years in prison but was released in early 2004 under a royal pardon. Lmrabet was later banned from working in journalism in Morocco between April 2005 and April 2015 after being convicted of defamation over comments on displaced people from Western Sahara, an area largely controlled by Morocco but disputed by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.

Meanwhile, outspoken rapper and filmmaker Mehdi El Youbi was brought before a court in Casablanca on Wednesday, despite not having a lawyer present due to a lawyers’ strike in Morocco, his supporters said.

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El Youbi was arrested on Monday night in Casablanca after being barred from returning to France, where he’s been based since 2017. His friends and family believe his arrest is linked to his politically-engaged lyrics and social media posts. They warned of an escalating crackdown on regime critics in Morocco following the emergence nationwide Gen Z protest movement last year.

“We cannot treat this escalation as business as usual,” the Association of Maghrebi Workers in France said in a statement on Wednesday. ‘We cannot get used to arrests. We cannot consider repression a normal form of governance.”