The boss of Radio M and Maghreb Émergent was sentenced to five years in prison and his publishing company was dissolved by the courts.
InThirty illustrious Algerian personalities from the world of art and culture, science, and media, and a veteran of the war of independence signed a petition last week to ask President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to grant journalist and media boss El Kadi Ihsane “a presidential pardon” and “return him to his freedom and lift the considerable weight weighing on his family and loved ones”. A weight which “also weighs, we know and note, on the image of Algeria ”.
Appeals dismissed
The boss of Radio M and Maghreb Émergent, one of the best-known journalists in Algeria, was sentenced on April 2, 2023, by an Algerian court to five years in prison, two of which were suspended, based on accusations related to the fact of having received funding to engage in “political propaganda” and “undermining state security”. The court also ordered the dissolution of the company Interface Médias, which brings together the two media outlets managed by El-Kadi, the confiscation of all its seized assets, and a fine of ten million dinars (more than 68,000 euros) against his company. On October 12, 2023, the Supreme Court rejected two appeals filed by his lawyers, thus confirming his seven-year sentence, broken down into five years in prison and two years of probation.
Defense doubts prosecution
According to one of the members of the journalist’s defense collective, the lawyer and political activist Zoubida Assoul, there “is no document in the legal file attesting that Ihsane El Kadi or Interface Médias received funds from organizations foreigners or a foreign person”. According to the lawyer, the accusation is only based on a sum of 25,000 pounds sterling (or 28,000 euros), sent to Ihsane El Kadi by her daughter, a shareholder of the Interface Médias group, from Great Britain, where she resides. This sum sent in installments over three years, between 2019 and 2021, was intended to pay the salaries of journalists and employees of the group, which was then in financial difficulty. According to Maître Zoubida Assoul, the publishing company of Radio M and Maghreb Émergent had a tax debt estimated at 9 million dinars (or more than 61,000 euros) and was no longer able to pay its employees.
The call to Tebboune
“The legal remedies having now been exhausted”, the Algerian president remains “the only one who can put an end to this painful and painful situation”, call the signatories of the petition, including the writer Yasmina Khadra, professor Ilyas Zerhouni, the actor and author Fellag and former fighter (mujahid) Louisette Ighilahriz. These signatories, who do not want to argue about the reasons for the journalist’s imprisonment and the “legal proceedings which resulted in his heavy sentence”, affirm that “the fate reserved for Ihsane El-Kadi has caused great despondency among many Algerians who wish to see the consecration of freedoms in our country.” “His professionalism and commitment have earned him deserved respect in our country and abroad,” continue the signatories of the appeal which has remained, for the moment, unanswered.
Amnesty International launched, in mid-January, an appeal for the release of El Kadi Ihsane, estimating that “Ihsane El-Kadi, 64 years old, has been arbitrarily incarcerated for more than a year in El Harrach prison for trumped-up charges that do not correspond to international human rights law regarding the right to freedom of expression. This prolonged detention is very difficult for his health.”
“Dungeon”
In May 2023, a collective of intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, Annie Ernaux, Arundhati Roy, Abdellatif Laabi, Ken Loach, and Achille Mbembe, published an appeal to the Algerian president asking him “to do everything in [his] power so that the security and judicial harassment suffered by Ihsane El-Kadi and all prisoners of conscience in Algeria stops. “Whatever the disagreements and antagonisms, Algeria is a larger ideal than the dungeon it is becoming for critical journalists and dissenting voices. It is the rediscovered land of the wretched of the earth,” wrote the signatories. Following this appeal, Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux was unable to be invited to the Algiers International Book Fair due to a visa refusal.
