Moroccan News Agency (MAP) Director General Khalil Hachimi Idrissi died Saturday morning at the age of 67 following a long illness. The late Khalil Hachimi will be buried Sunday after the prayer of Addohr in the cemetery Achouhada in Rabat. Born on Aug. 14, 1956 in Casablanca, Khalil Hachimi was involved very early in developing media and was one of the actors of the creation and development of intercultural and community communication in France where he worked in several radio stations. A graduate of the Institute of Geography at the University of Paris I-Pantheon-Sorbonne, he was a columnist, reporter and then Editor-in-Chief for many years of the weekly newspaper “Maroc Hebdo international” before creating “Aujourd’hui Le Maroc”, a generalist French-speaking daily, in 2000. In 2007, he was President of the Jury of the Grand National Press Prize before being elected in 2008 President of the FMEJ (Moroccan Federation of Newspaper Publishers), a position to which he was re-elected in 2011. Khalil Hachimi Idrissi has to his credit several publications including “Billets Bleus” Moroccan chronicles 1994-2000. In 2011, he was appointed Director General of MAP by HM King Mohammed VI. During the era of Khalil Hachimi, the Moroccan News Agency has experienced a great expansion by becoming a public news pole. ‘We commiserate and are saddened with the passing of a great man well loved by his colleagues and the officers and personnel of our esteemed partner agency MAP,’ said Luis A. Morente, deputy executive editor of the Philippine News Agency.

Source: Philippines News Agency