After long months of pre-trial detention, several detainees including the writer Abdeslam Abdenour were acquitted and released on Monday and Sunday following trials held in Algiers and Batna.
The Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) welcomed these verdicts with “relief” while calling for the repeal of “liberticide laws”.
In a statement made public on Tuesday, November 15, the party, while expressing its “relief” at the dropping of the charges against these citizens “prosecuted for crimes of opinion”, expressed “its strong anger” and his “disgust” at what he describes as ” excesses ” and “levity with which state affairs are now managed”.
Among those acquitted over the past two days is the regional leader of the RCD in Batna, Yacine Merchiche, who remains “still abusively prosecuted”.
RCD solidarity
Another party official, Menad Larbi, a member of the national council, is still being held in Relizane. In the same statement, the RCD warns about “the conditions of his detention”.
The RCD says it is in solidarity and pays tribute to all those who suffer “this injustice and this unjustified harassment” for their “sense of responsibility and their courage”.
It also calls for the dropping of charges and the rehabilitation of all prisoners of conscience and the repeal of ” liberticidal laws beginning with Article 87 bis “, laws resulting from legislative amendments “contrary to the Constitution and international conventions ratified by Algeria” and intended to “criminalize political initiative and action by assimilating it to terrorist activity”.
The RCD also calls for “the restoration of public and press freedoms in accordance with the Constitution”.
