Algerian activists and lawyers said 16 members of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) have been remanded in custody after an investigating judge charged them with terrorism and attempts to overthrow the government by unconstitutional means.
Earlier this month, several FIS members were detained after they issued a statement criticizing a “political deadlock” in Algeria, which security forces said was a “threat” to the country.
The FIS members were then subject to a security investigation. The judge who questioned them ordered their detention pending investigation. At the start of the campaign, four FIS members were detained but the arrests ended with 16 members.
Ali Benhadjar, a spokesperson for the group, was among those detained. He was arrested a few hours after he appeared in a video on social media, reading a statement titled “The Frames of the Genuine Islamic Salvation Front,” in which he addressed the social situation in the country.
Benhadjar highlighted the social situation in Alegria, saying the country is experiencing “unnecessary tragedies”, blaming these on “sharp divisions caused by unlimited greed of the ruling elite, incorrect policies and destructive selfishness.”
Benhadjar also mentioned that despair has driven young people and brains to leave the country without return.
“There is a stifling political crisis and limitation on freedoms and increasing levels of poverty [and] hopelessness that have driven the country’s youth to leave the country,” his statement added.
The Algerian authorities were highly sensitive to the sudden media attention given to FIS leaders. They feared their return to political action, after the group was banned from any activity under a 2006 law.
The detained FIS members also include Ahmed Zaoui, a prominent leader who spent years in New Zealand before he returned to Algeria in 2014 and stayed in the city of Medea, south of the capital.
The Islamist FIS was on the verge of winning parliamentary elections in 1991 before the military annulled them after a coup the following year. The FIS was then banned and a five-year civil war followed.
