Algerian journalist Rabah Karèche, imprisoned since mid-April, was sentenced to one year in prison, including eight months closed, by the court in Tamanrasset (southern Algeria), announced the French-language daily Liberté for which he works.
“The Liberté correspondent in Tamanrasset was sentenced to one year in prison, including eight months closed and four months suspended. Rabah Karèche will spend another four months in prison”, explains Liberté on its website.
The journalist was prosecuted in particular for “voluntary dissemination of false information likely to attack public order”.
He was also accused of “creating an electronic account devoted to the dissemination of information liable to provoke segregation and hatred in society” and of having “undermined the safety and national unity”.
On August 5, the prosecution requested a three-year prison sentence and a heavy fine against him.
Rabah Karèche was indicted and imprisoned on April 19 after publishing the report of a protest movement by the Tuaregs, a local Berber minority.
An experienced and respected professional established for a long time in Tamanrasset, he had reported that the historic inhabitants of this region denounced “the expropriation of their lands” during a new territorial division.
The Tuareg populations of the extreme south of Algeria regularly denounce their economic and social marginalization within a very centralized State.
Mr. Karèche’s detention sparked outrage from his colleagues in Algeria and abroad, and anger from lawyers after Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune called the journalist an “arsonist” in an interview with the weekly French Le Point.
His lawyers had denounced “a violation of the presumption of innocence” and an “attempt to influence justice”.
During the pleadings, the defense had demanded the abandonment of all prosecutions and the release of the journalist.
A reform of the penal code adopted last year now criminalizes the dissemination of “false information” “undermining public order”.
Their authors are liable to one to three years in prison, or even twice as much in the event of a repeat offense, according to this new text criticized by defenders of press freedom.
Algeria is in 146th place (out of 180) in the 2021 world press freedom ranking established by the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF), as in 2020. But the country has lost 27 places since 2015.
