Algeria: Journalist’s appeal of seven-year sentence rejected

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This article was published 12/10/2023 (753 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — A journalist in Algeria targeted as part of a broader crackdown against pro-democracy protests will remain imprisoned after the country’s Supreme Court rejected his appeals on Thursday.

Defense attorneys for Ihsane El Kadi, the owner of a media company that oversaw Algeria’s now-shuttered news site Maghreb Emergent and radio station Radio M, filed two appeals asking the court to overturn the journalist’s sentence for taking foreign funds for his media outlets and “inciting acts susceptible to threaten state security.”

El Kadi is one of hundreds of people associated with Algeria’s pro-democracy movement who have faced criminal charges and imprisonment. His website and radio station emerged as key channels during the North African nation’s 2019 Hirak protests.

In April, a court in Algiers gave him a 7-year sentence that included three years in prison and ordered his website and radio station shut down. The sentence was part of a growing list of criminal penalties given to journalists, reflecting the increasing difficulties they face throughout North Africa.

The trend represents a reversal for Algeria, which nurtured a vibrant independent press after it rose from its “black decade” of civil war during the 1990s.

“I’m devastated. I have no words,” El Kadi’s wife, Samia Ait Yala, told The Associated Press after her husband’s appeal was rejected.

Algeria’s Hirak protests were among the post-Arab Spring Middle East’s largest and led to the resignation of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019. But its weekly demonstrations and sit-ins subsided during the coronavirus pandemic.

Boutefilka’s successor, President Abdelmajid Tebboune, initially released some jailed protesters but later restarted jailing journalists and opposition figures, causing Hirak’s hopes to dissipate.

El Kadi was taken into custody in December 2022. Though the appeal was likely the last avenue to fighting his conviction, El Kadi’s lawyer Fetta Sadat said the defense team held out hope that Tebboune may pardon him next month, on the anniversary of Algerian independence.

Sadat said he had yet to see the ruling announced in court on Thursday and would wait to see it before moving forward.