An Algerian court increases the sentence against prominent journalist Ihsane el Kadi to seven years in prison

June 18 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Algiers Court of Appeals decided this Sunday to increase by two years the prison sentence against the prominent journalist Ihsane el Kadi, who will now spend at least five years behind bars plus another 24 months of suspended sentence after being sentenced last month, when the media group he worked for, Interface Médias, was dissolved and fined for receiving funds from abroad.

El Kadi and Interface Médias, publisher of Radio M and Maghreb Émergent -of which the journalist was director– were also sentenced to pay one million Algerian dinars (about 6,800 euros) in damages and interest to the Audiovisual Regulation Authority ( ARAV), which was one of the plaintiffs, as reported by the newspaper ‘Tout sur l’Algerie’.

The new verdict was announced this Sunday by the representative of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in the North African country, Khaled Drareni, who spared no words to describe a new “surreal” sentence, after a trial “worthy of a novel by Kafka”: “Seven years in prison, five firm and two suspended. Incomprehensible,” he lamented on his Twitter account.

El Kadi was prosecuted under article 95 bis of the Penal Code which establishes a prison sentence of five to seven years for “anyone who receives funds, a gift or an advantage to carry out, or incite to carry out, acts that may undermine the security of the State, the stability and normal functioning of its institutions, national unity and territorial integrity”.

However, the journalist’s lawyer, Zubida Asul, has replied that “there is no evidence that El Kadi has received funds from a foreign organization or State” and that the money denounced by the Prosecutor came from his daughter, Tinhinan.

“The process against my client has been a book political trial,” lamented the lawyer, “which hides a deliberate desire to silence this journalist.”

El Kadi was arrested at the end of December at his home in the city of Boumerdes after publishing a series of articles criticizing the role of the Algerian Army in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections.

After five days at the headquarters of the General Directorate of Internal Security, he was placed under provisional detention on December 29, despite requests from intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Annie Ernaux, Ken Loach or Arundhati Roy to request his release.