A convicted Algerian journalist will remain imprisoned after the country's Supreme Court rejected his appeal.
Defense attorneys for Ihsane El Kadi, the owner of a media company that oversaw Algeria's news site Maghreb Emergent and radio station Radio M, filed two appeals asking the court to overturn the journalist's sentence for taking foreign funds for his media outlets and “inciting acts susceptible to threaten state security."
Both appeals were rejected on Thursday.
El Kadi is one of hundreds of people associated with Algeria's pro-democracy movement who have faced criminal charges and imprisonment.
‘Irregularities in the trial’
His website and radio station emerged as key channels during the North African nation's 2019 Hirak protests.
In April, a court in Algiers gave him a seven-year sentence that included three years in prison and ordered the shutdown of his two news outlets.
The sentence was part of a growing list of criminal penalties given to journalists, reflecting the increasing restrictions on press freedoms in the North African country.
Khaled Drareni, Reporters Without Borders' North Africa representative, said press freedoms had regressed in recent years throughout the region as journalists face imprisonment or fines as they try to do their jobs.
“This is very bad news because everyone expected this appeal would be accepted, including lawyers who pointed out many irregularities in the trial,” he said, noting concerns about the lack of evidence against El Kadi presented in court. “We’re all in a bit of a state of shock.”
Hirak protests
The appeal rejection is a setback for Algerian media, which nurtured a vibrant independent press after it rose from of civil war during the 1990s.
“I’m devastated. I have no words,” El Kadi’s wife, Djamila Ait Yala, said after her husband’s appeal ruling.
Algeria's Hirak protests were among the post-Arab Spring Middle East's largest and led to the resignation of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019. But its weekly demonstrations and sit-ins subsided during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Boutefilka's successor, President Abdelmajid Tebboune, initially released some jailed protesters but later started jailing journalists and opposition figures, and dissipating the Hirak movement.
El Kadi was taken into custody in December 2022. The appeal was the last avenue to fighting his conviction, but his lawyer Fetta Sadat said the defense team hopes that Tebboune may pardon him next month, on the anniversary of Algerian independence.
