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Algeria: Die in Prison for a Post on Facebook

What happened on Sunday, April 24 at Kolรฉa prison? This is the question that agitates the canvas after the sudden death – and for the moment unexplained – of Hakim Debbazi, a prisoner of conscience.

On the evening of April 24, numerous social media posts announced the news. At 10:44 p.m., the information is confirmed by lawyer Tarek Merah: the conscience prisoner Hakim Debbazi, 55, under arrest warrant since February 22 for publications on his Facebook page deemed harmful to the national interest, is died in Kolรฉa prison. 

Before his arrest, this father of three who lived in Hadjout, a coastal town in the wilaya of Tipaza, west of Algiers, had barely 121 subscribers for the pro-Hirak videos he relayed. Four days after his death, his account had barely forty additional โ€œlikesโ€. Nothing to threaten power.  

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Request for “provisional freedom” rejected

Immediately after the announcement of the death, the Algerian League for Human Rights urged the judicial authorities to communicate “on the circumstances of this tragic disappearance”, assuming that the fate of a prisoner is the responsibility of the authorities. prisons. This makes the opening of an investigation inevitable.

But neither the Ministry of Justice nor the prosecution have yet reacted, thus maintaining suspicions about the cause of death. Especially since the prisoner did not suffer, according to his entourage present at his funeral, from any pathology before his incarceration. But during the last visit, on April 2, he complained to his family of chest pains. His request for “provisional freedom” had been rejected.

Before his death, neither the members of the Collective for the Defense of Convicted Prisoners nor the human rights activists followed the case of this prisoner. He is not the only one. Many families attest to human rights activists, prefer not to publicize the lawsuits affecting their relatives so as not to link them to the Hirak movement, which has been harshly repressed since Abdelmadjid Tebboune came to power.

NEITHER THE COLLECTIVE FOR THE DEFENSE OF CONVICTED PRISONERS NOR HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS FOLLOWED HIS CASE.

In return for this discretion, relatives hope for leniency from the judges. A dozen families who have one of their members in prison have categorically refused any form of help, according to an activist who closely follows the issue of prisoners of conscience. At least 150 prisoners prosecuted for social media posts have been awaiting trial for several months.

The courts rarely respond favorably to requests for provisional release. In recent days, members of the defense have alerted to the case of two detainees suffering from psychological disorders. Several requests for provisional release, supported by two court reports submitted by their lawyers, have been rejected.

Consequence or not of the death of Hakim Debbazi, Ibrahim Khelil Adel, a 22-year-old from Laghouat, imprisoned in El Harrach prison, was released on April 27. On the other hand, Ibrahim Tolmit, detained for eleven months in the Tazoult penitentiary center, in Batna, despite a diagnosis of schizophrenia by a college of experts, did not benefit from this procedure.

Extension of preventive detention

These cases have brought preventive detention back into the center of the debate, supposed to constitute an exception when the accused does not present enough guarantees to appear at his trial or when he is prosecuted for serious offenses.

Human rights organizations such as the Algerian Human Rights League and Amnesty International were the first to step up to demand the establishment of a commission of inquiry, denounce the abusive use of preventive detention, and call for the creation of a visiting commission to inquire into the conditions of detention.

POWER REMAINS AND WILL REMAIN THE ONE AND ONLY RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS DEATH.

Political figures, such as the president of the Movement for Society and Peace (MSP), Abderrazak Makri, the vice-president of Jil Jadid, Zoheir Rouis, the lawyer Zoubida Assoul, president of the Union for Change and Progress, or even Karim Tabbou, coordinator of the Democratic and Social Union, all expressed their anger and called on the authorities to shed light on the circumstances of Hakim Debbazi’s death.

Karim Tabbou thus reveals that “the authorities have announced to his family that Hakim died following a cardiac arrest due to a serious respiratory deficiency”. For him, “power remains and will remain the one and only responsible for his death”.

โ€œOffense to the president and the institutionsโ€

Equally indignant citizens have launched a petition on social networks, denouncing the death of Hakim Debbazi. A text signed by well-known Hirak figures, such as the lawyer and human rights activist Mustapha Bouchachi and the vice-president of the Algerian League for Human Rights Said Salhi.

The Hakim Debbazi affair has revived the memory of the death, in 2019, of Kameleddine Fekhar, a fervent defender of the rights of the Mozabites, or that, in 2016, of the journalist and cyberactivist Mohamed Talmat.

Fekhar was prosecuted for “insulting the president and the institutions”. This doctor who, to denounce his preventive detention, quickly began a hunger strike, breathed his last on May 28, 2019, at the Frantz-Fanon hospital in Blida. His family regularly demanded his release after his health deteriorated.

Mohamed Talmat, also sentenced to two years in prison for “insulting the institutions and the president”, died in prison on December 11, 2016, at the age of 42, after three months of hunger strike. The investigations opened into the circumstances of these deaths have never made their conclusions public.

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