(Photo: Journalists Mouloudj (left) and Bouras (right)):
An Algerian journalist and rights activist was taken into custody on Sunday facing a charge of “glorifying terrorism”, one of his lawyers said. Hassan Bouras was also charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation and “plotting against state security with the aim of changing the system of governance”, lawyer Abdelghani Badi told AFP. Bouras allegedly used “technical and media means to recruit individuals against the authority of the state”, Badi said.
Bouras was arrested on September 6 in El Bayadh, some 500 kilometres (300 miles) southwest of the capital Algiers, and his home was searched for unknown reasons, according to the Algerian Human Rights League (LADDH). Bouras was sentenced to a year in prison in 2016 for “insulting a judge, a public forces member and a government body”.
At the time rights group Amnesty International said Bouras was a “prisoner of conscience”, stating that he was jailed over a video exposing corruption of local officials in El Bayadh. According to prisoners’ rights group CNLD, around 200 people are in jail in connection with the Hirak pro-democracy protest movement that has shaken the North African country sporadically since 2019, or over individual freedoms.
Also, Algerian authorities have arrested a journalist from a local French-language newspaper and searched his house, a rights group and one of his colleagues said Monday. “Mohamed Mouloudj, journalist at the Liberte daily, was arrested on Sunday and his house searched,” the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH) said on Facebook. “He is still in custody in Algiers.”
Mouloudj’s newspaper, where he has worked for a decade, did not immediately comment, but one of his colleagues confirmed the arrest. “He had already had run-ins with the security services, who took away his passport for months,” Ali Boukhlef said. “He had also been taken in for questioning several times.” Another Algerian journalist, Hassan Bouras, was arrested a week ago and formally placed in preventive detention on Sunday, accused of “glorifying terrorism” among other crimes, his lawyers said.
Algeria is ranked 146th out of 180 countries and territories on the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index. According to prisoners’ rights group CNLD, around 200 people are in jail in
connection with the Hirak pro-democracy protest movement that has shaken the North African country sporadically since 2019, or over individual freedoms.
