A failed presidential candidate in 2019, the officer was sentenced to four years in prison. He was due out next June, but justice has just increased his sentence
The court of Algiers has increased the sentence of the former general-major, Ali Ghediri, condemning him to six years of imprisonment for “undermining the morale of the army in time of peace”. This is a fairly rare occurrence in Algeria since generally, at the end of the appeal trials, the sentence pronounced at first instance is either renewed or reduced.
Since June 2019, the senior officer has been serving a four-year sentence in Koléa prison for having called on the military institution, in an interview with the daily El Watan at the end of 2018, to block the way to the fifth term of Abdelaziz Bouteflika who was looming SO.
On June 13, the former abortive presidential candidate of April 2019 would have served his entire sentence and could have regained his freedom. The verdict of the Algiers Court of Appeal, announced on the night of May 16 to 17, therefore keeps him in prison until June 2025. Justice also deprives him of his political and civic rights for five years.
At the bar, the accused challenged the charge of “harming the morale of the army”. “We do not move the armies with declarations. I only expressed an opinion. I could not remain passive in front of what was happening in my country. We were on the edge of the precipice. We wanted to propel [ex-president Abdelaziz Bouteflika] once again in a wheelchair to the head of the state,” he said. Around 3:00 a.m., the former high-ranking officer left the courtroom and went to the place of his detention in a van from the Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI), under the encouragement of his family.
“An unfair trial”
His lawyers, who sensed during the indictment of the prosecution that the aggravation of the sentence was taking shape, denounced during their pleadings “an unfair trial”. “The prosecutor’s indictment is based on a press article around which we have built a story that does not hold water. Nothing in the facts tallies with the accusation,” protested one of them.
In October 2022, after an appeal lodged by his lawyers, the Supreme Court announced the referral of the case of the former general major to the criminal chamber of the court of Algiers. His defense hoped to see him again appear free and acquitted. But the speed with which the date for an appeal hearing was set worried Ghediri’s defense and those close to him. His name did not appear on the scheduling table for the appeal session posted last April and was added to it by the registry. “It’s very weird. We created a special session for him, ”says a member of his defense collective.
This impromptu programming had prompted his family to support, a few days before the trial, via social networks that “his only concern is that Ali Ghediri regains his freedom”, far from any political ambition. At the origin of this development, many videos broadcast on YouTube lent the former general major the desire to reconnect with politics on his release from prison.
Arrested at his home on June 12, 2019, the senior officer, who headed the central human resources department of the Ministry of National Defense for fifteen years, was initially prosecuted for “participation in the provision of information that damages the national economy to agents of foreign countries”, including a certain Sephora Cohen, and “forgery and use of forgery”. Charges – which will ultimately be canceled by the indictment chamber of the Algiers court – supported, according to the prosecution, by his strange meeting with businessman Hocine Gasmi in September 2018.
A cumbersome support
At the time, Gasmi, who presented himself as party leader, had proposed to General-Major Ghediri, a novice in politics and having no partisan support, said the latter in court, to help him collect the 5,000 signatures in support of his candidacy for the presidential election l. Reassured by the multitude of photos of the pundits of the system which adorned an entire wall of the office of his interlocutor, Ghediri had accepted the proposal.
Problem: according to the legal file, Hocine Gasmi is actually a habitual criminal who hid behind the false identity of Hocine Gouasmi to create a political formation, the Forum of Algeria of Tomorrow, and to approach senior Algerian officials. He too was in the dock during the appeal trial, and saw his sentence increased: it went from 10 years to 12 years in detention.
