A prominent Moroccan journalist and critic of the kingdom's government was set to appear before a prosecutor on Monday for "spreading false information" after his arrest upon return to the country from Spain, his wife told AFP.

Ali Lmrabet, 66, is a leading figure in Morocco's independent press and has lived in Spain for years. He holds dual French-Moroccan citizenship.

"He called me at 7:00 p.m. and told me that upon arriving at Tangier airport, he was detained for spreading false information and undermining state institutions,” his wife Laura Feliu told AFP late on Sunday.

Lmrabet told Feliu that he was the subject of "several arrest warrants" related to the allegations, she said.

Morocco’s public prosecutor did not immediately respond to an AFP comment request.

Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) told AFP in a statement that Lmrabet was accused of “alleged dissemination of false information harmful to constitutional institutions,” pending his hearing before the prosecutor.

“RSF stands mobilized alongside the journalist and will closely monitor the developments of this case,” the group said in the statement.

"We call on Moroccan authorities to scrupulously respect Ali Lmrabet’s procedural rights and guarantee his access to a lawyer of his choice."

Lmrabet’s wife said the journalist had not returned to Morocco for "several years" following the death of his father.

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 he made on displaced Sahrawis living in the Tindouf refugee camps in southwestern Algeria.

Western Sahara, a mineral-rich former Spanish colony, has been largely controlled by Morocco since 1975 but is considered a non-self-governing territory by the United Nations.

Morocco has long been in conflict with the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, which seeks independence for the Sahrawi people.

END/AFP/ASA

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).