The arrest of the journalist and the sealing of the media offices he directs aroused a wave of solidarity among his colleagues and human rights activists in Algeria and Europe.
MO12345LEMONDE WITH AFP
The director of the Algerian station Radio M and the Maghreb Emergent information site, Ihsane El-Kadi, arrested on Friday, was formally placed in pre-trial detention on Thursday, December 29, announced the media he directs. Mr. El-Kadi is the subject of prosecution on the basis of articles of the penal code relating to publications and donations, according to Maghreb Emergent, who specifies that his director is notably prosecuted under article 95 bis.
This text provides for a prison sentence of five to seven years for “whoever receives funds, a donation or an advantage … to perform or encourage acts likely to undermine state security, to the Stability and normal functioning of its institutions, national unity, territorial integrity, the fundamental interests of Algeria or public security and order “.
m. El-Kadi was presented before the prosecutor “in the absence of his lawyers who have not been notified,” said Radio M.
Solidarity Vague
The day after Mr. El-Kadi’s arrest, the headquarters of the Interface Media agency, which publishes Radio M and Maghreb Emergent, had been sewn and the equipment, seized, according to these media. The arrest of Mr. El-Kadi and the sealing of the media offices he directed aroused a wave of solidarity among his colleagues and human rights activists in Algeria and Europe. An online petition calling for his release has collected nearly eight hundred signatures.
Reacting to its placement in pre -trial detention, the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) estimated that this measure was “the culmination of a long persecution and an endless judicial harassment whose obvious objective is silence one of the last Algerian media still open to free debate and criticism “.
“By deciding to place Ihsane El-Kadi in detention, the authorities have clearly chosen to go to the end of their authoritarian logic to muzzle the media and send a heavy message to those who continue to defend the freedom of Inform, “said Khaled Drareni, RSF representative in North Africa.
Pursued for a press article, Mr. El-Kadi had been sentenced in June to six months in prison, a sentence confirmed on appeal but not accompanied by a warrant. He had been tried following a complaint by the former Minister of Communication, Ammar Belhimer, for an article published on the radio site M on the Islamist movement Rachad, classified as terrorist organization in Algeria, and the Hirak, ProDemocrat. For RSF, Mr. El-Kadi “undoubtedly pays the price of his critical articles towards the authorities and the independence of the media he directs”.
Algeria appears in the 134