(RSF/IFEX) – Reporters Without Borders has condemned the three-month prison sentences passed by a court in eastern city of Jijel on 25 December 2006 on Omar Belhouchet, editor of the daily “El Watan”, and Chawki Amari, one of his journalists, for “libelling” the local prefect in an article last June accusing him of corruption. They […]
(RSF/IFEX) – Reporters Without Borders has condemned the three-month prison sentences passed by a court in eastern city of Jijel on 25 December 2006 on Omar Belhouchet, editor of the daily “El Watan”, and Chawki Amari, one of his journalists, for “libelling” the local prefect in an article last June accusing him of corruption. They were also fined 1 million dinars (approx. 10,900 euros).
“Algeria must put an end to imprisonment for defamation, which is still being used to gag journalists,” the press freedom organisation said. “These sentences make us fear a new wave of abusive libel suits and arrests that would mark a return to the repressive practices of the past after signs of improvement since the start of the year.”
A pardon issued by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in July for all journalists convicted of defamation and “insulting” the country’s institutions had raised hopes of an improvement in press freedom. Reporters Without Borders regrets that the pardon was not accompanied by changes to the law.
The sentences handed down on 25 December by a court in Jijel (360 km east of Algiers) were the result of a libel suit brought by the prefect over an article published on 17 June. The hearing was held in the absence of the two defendants. Amari told Reporters Without Borders he did not receive a court summons and did not even know there had been a trial until the verdict was announced.
He and Belhouchet intend to appeal and will not have to go to prison until the appeal court confirms their sentences.
Ali Fodil, the editor of the daily “Ech-Chourouk”, is also the target of a lawsuit by the prefect over an article he published last summer making similar allegations, but his case will not be heard until 14 January 2007. In Fodil’s case, the prosecutor has requested a three-month prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 dinars (approx. 544 euros).
Meanwhile, Salah Mokhtari of the national daily “El Djazaïr News” was arrested on 18 December in Médéa, a town 80 km south of Algiers, where he had gone to cover a story. When he was taken to the prosecutor’s office the following day, he was told four arrest warrants were pending against him from 2004 and 2005 for alleged libel in stories he had written for the Arabic-language weekly “El Kawalis”, for which he was working at the time.
Mokhtari, who had never received a summons in connection with these cases, was finally accorded a provisional release on 25 December, after being held for a week. He is to appear before a judge on 8 January 2007.
Freelance journalist Arezki Aït-Larbi, who writes for the French newspapers “Le Figaro” and “Ouest-France”, recently learned, after his request for a new passport was refused, that he had been sentenced without his knowledge in December 1997 to six months in prison as a result of a defamation suit brought by a Justice Ministry official over an article he wrote in April 1995 for the Algerian weekly “L’Evénement”.
The official used to head the department that supervises the implementation of court sentences. Aït-Larbi’s article had criticised his department’s slowness to respond to allegations of mistreatment of detainees in Lambèse prison. Aït-Larbi told Reporters Without Borders that the Algiers prosecutor’s office never responded to his lawyer’s request for a new trial.
