Ex-Algeria PM Sentenced to 12 Years for Corruption

Former Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia surrounded by guards after being allowed to attend his brother's funeral on Monday (AFP)
Former Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia surrounded by guards after being allowed to attend his brother's funeral on Monday (AFP)
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Ex-Algeria PM Sentenced to 12 Years for Corruption

Former Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia surrounded by guards after being allowed to attend his brother's funeral on Monday (AFP)
Former Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia surrounded by guards after being allowed to attend his brother's funeral on Monday (AFP)

Former Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia faces a new severe prison sentence, the second in a matter of months, after being convicted in a corruption case linked to a business tycoon.

An Algerian court issued a verdict on Wednesday on the car assembly plant case involving Ouyahia and Abdelmalek Sellal, former ministers and businessmen.

Last year, a court jailed Ouyahia, who served four times as prime minister under former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, for 15 years and Sellal, who served twice as prime minister, to 12 years in another corruption case.

The cases are linked to the car assembly industry in the north African country and illegal financing of Bouteflika’s election campaign.

The court issued a 12-year prison sentence against Ouyahia, and a 3-year sentence and a fine against former industry minister Youcef Yousfi, announcing his innocence of the charge of bribery.

The court also issued a 20-year sentence, a fine, and an arrest warrant against former industry minister Abdeslam Bouchouareb.

Mourad Eulmi, the head of the Algerian family-owned firm SOVAC which runs an assembly plant with Germany’s Volkswagen AG, was convicted and given a 10-year imprisonment.

The court case included “money laundering”, “smuggling public money abroad”, “evading the payment of taxes,” “granting loans from government banks out of interest to a businessman”, and “adapting the government job to a private interest.”

When questioned by the judge, Ouyahia defended himself by saying that all policies in the field of industrial investment, especially the activity of installing cars, were developed by former President Bouteflika, and that he was only the executor of those policies.

He added that he used to report daily to Bouteflilka about government works.



Israel Says Rockets Fired from Syria for the First Time Since Bashar Assad’s Fall 

An Israeli military vehicle is seen near the border between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria, May 4, 2025. (Reuters)
An Israeli military vehicle is seen near the border between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria, May 4, 2025. (Reuters)
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Israel Says Rockets Fired from Syria for the First Time Since Bashar Assad’s Fall 

An Israeli military vehicle is seen near the border between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria, May 4, 2025. (Reuters)
An Israeli military vehicle is seen near the border between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria, May 4, 2025. (Reuters)

The Israeli army said two rockets were fired from Syria into open areas in the Israel-occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday, marking the first time a strike has been launched toward Israel from Syrian territory since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December.

Syrian state media reported that Israel shelled the western countryside of Syria’s Daraa province after the rocket launch. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, also reported Israeli airstrikes that caused “violent explosions” around the city of Quneitra and in the Daraa countryside.

A group calling itself the Mohammed Deif Brigades — named after a Hamas military leader killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza last year — claimed the attack in a post on Telegram. The group first surfaced on social media a few days before.

“Until now, it’s just a Telegram channel. It’s not known if it is a real group,” said Ahmed Aba Zeid, a Syrian researcher who has studied armed factions in southern Syria.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that Israel considers “the Syrian president directly responsible for every threat and firing toward the State of Israel” and warned of a “full response” to come “as soon as possible.”

Israel has been suspicious of the former opposition fighters who formed the new Syrian government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, and has launched hundreds of airstrikes on Syria and seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory since Assad’s fall.

Syria’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run TV channel that it has “not yet verified the accuracy” of the reports of strikes launched from Syria toward Israel.

“We affirm that Syria has not and will not pose a threat to any party in the region,” the statement said. It condemned the Israeli shelling, which it said had resulted in “significant human and material losses.”

The US, which has warmed to al-Sharaa's government and recently moved to lift some sanctions previously imposed on Syria, has pushed for Syria to normalize relations with Israel.

In a recent interview with the Jewish Journal, al-Sharaa said he wants to see a return to a 1974 ceasefire agreement between the two countries but stopped short of proposing immediate normalization, saying that “peace must be earned through mutual respect, not fear.”