The North Africa Journal – 28 January 2019: Algerian courts have ordered the release of two journalists who were obviously arrested for the wrong reasons. Adlene Mellah was arrested on 9 December for taking part to a rally in support of a jailed singer. Mellah writes in the news websites Algerie Direct and Dzair Presse. Likewise, blogger Merzoug Touati’s seven year sentence was cancelled although the judge required that remains behind bars pending a new trial. He was arrested in January 2017 after a video interview with an Israeli official surfaced on the Internet. Below are the details of these two cases:
Algiers, Jan 24, 2019 (AFP) – An Algerian court has released a journalist a month after he was sentenced to one year in jail for taking part in an
unauthorised protest, his lawyer said. Adlene Mellah, who heads the news websites Algerie Direct and Dzair Presse, was arrested on December 9 for attending a rally in support of an imprisoned singer. He was found guilty of unlawful assembly and sentenced to one year in jail on December 25. On Wednesday a court in Algiers gave him a suspended six-month sentence and released him on appeal, said the lawyer, Noureddine Benissad. Mellah was first arrested on October 22 in a separate case of alleged blackmail, before being released a month later. He still faces charges of blackmail, defamation and invasion of privacy in that case which is due go before a court on February 7. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked Algeria 136th out of 180 countries on its press freedom index for 2018.
Algiers, Jan 24, 2019 (AFP) – An Algerian court has scrapped a seven-year jail sentence for a blogger accused of providing intelligence to foreign
governments, his lawyer said Thursday. Merzoug Touati, who was arrested in January 2017 after an online video interview with an Israeli official, remains behind bars pending a new trial, lawyer Salah Dabouz told AFP. Dabouz said the case had been returned to the appeals court in the eastern city of Skikda, with the date of the hearing still to be set. The lawyer warned that a fresh trial could end up seeing Touati, 30, being
given a heftier sentence. “It’s a sensitive case, I have a lot of fears,” Dabouz said. But press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders said it was still “extremely relieved” to hear the sentence had been ditched. Touati was initially handed a 10-year sentence in May, but that was cut to
seven years following an appeal. Muslim-majority Algeria has no diplomatic ties with Israel. In addition to conducting an interview with a foreign ministry spokesman from the Jewish state, Touati in a Facebook post called for protests against a new financial law in Algeria prior to his arrest.
Rights groups have condemned the case against Touati, with Amnesty International saying he was being persecuted “solely for expressing his
peaceful opinion online”.
