Leaders in Algerian political parties, who met with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Tuesday, said that he “does not recognize the presence of prisoners of conscience in the country,” in reference to recent accusations by the opposition that the government has imprisoned 230 activists for expressing their views.
Louisa Hanoune, Secretary-General of the Workers’ Party and Youcef Aouchiche, First Secretary of the Opposition Front of Socialist Forces, called on Tebboune to “use his legal authority to issue orders to release prisoners of conscience.”
But the Algerian president replied: “We do not have prisoners of conscience in the country’s prisons... Tell me their names.”
According to the same politicians who attended Tuesday’s meeting, the discussion touched on the case of seventy-year-old journalist Saad Bouakba, who was convicted last year by the judiciary to six months of imprisonment with a suspended sentence, because of a satirical article he wrote about residents of an area south of the capital.
However, Tebboune refused to deal with this case as “restriction against a journalist because of an opinion article,” stressing that he “insulted the residents of an entire region” and added: “We spared him prison due to his age.”
Participants in the meeting also discussed the imprisonment of distinguished journalist, Ihsan El-Kadi, for 7 years, including 5 effective years, on charges of “receiving money from abroad for the purpose of undermining security.”
The charge led to the closure of his media outlet at the end of 2022, while the defense and colleagues of the sixty-year-old journalist confirmed that his writings, which strongly criticized the president, were the reason for his problems with the authorities and his imprisonment.
But Tebboune stressed, according to the politicians, that El-Kadi’s involvement in foreign financing, which is prohibited by law, has led to his prosecution.
According to leaks from the political dialogue, the president warned of “foreign attempts to harm the country’s stability,” and mentioned a specific country that “is targeting us.”
He also spoke about “the unrest in Mali, Niger, and Libya, and the repercussions of the situation in the neighborhood on our national security.”
Algeria’s relations with countries on the African coast deteriorated suddenly at the beginning of this year.
