On 26 December 2019, Omar Radi was summoned to the local police station in Casablanca where he was arrested.[15] The official reason given for his arrest was that—in April 2019, more than 6 months before his arrest—Radi tweeted critically of a Casablanca magistrate for delivering 20-years jail sentence of 42 activists, including Nasser Zefzafi, from the Hirak Rif Movement.[16] In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Radi stated that he believed he was arrested because he was at a journalism awards ceremony in Algeria 3 days prior to his incarceration, speaking to the public about the Moroccan political economy and what he described as "economic predation" in Morocco and a "state capture model of economy."[17]