Sentenced to five years in prison for calling for a boycott of the 2019 presidential election, the businessman announced on January 2 that he would give up political life.
Algerian opponent and businessman Rachid Nekkaz, sentenced to five years in prison in July 2022 for calling for a boycott of the 2019 presidential election, was released for “humanitarian reasons” on Wednesday (January 18th), announced the National Committee for release of detainees (CNLD). The French-language daily Le Soir d’Algérie reported that 51-year-old Rachid Nekkaz had been granted a presidential pardon.
The release of this opponent comes two weeks after the announcement of his abandonment of political life in a letter written from his cell and given to his relatives. In this letter published on January 2 on his Facebook page, he wrote that he had “resigned himself by force of circumstance to stopping politics in Algeria”, adding that he had also written to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on December 10 to inform him ” officially” of his decision.
He had also indicated that he wished “from now on to devote himself exclusively to the resolution of his health problems, to writing and to his family […] selfishly abandoned in the United States for ten years”. Incarcerated since May 2021, Mr. Nekkaz had already been imprisoned from December 2019 to February 2021, in particular for “incitement to violence through social networks”, where he was then very present.
