What everyone feared has happened. After six days in police custody in the Antar barracks of the headquarters of the General Directorate of Internal Security (Algerian army intelligence services), journalist Ihsane El Kadi was placed under arrest warrant on Thursday 29 December by the public prosecutor at the court of Sidi M’hamed, in Algiers.
“Given the length of the police custody, we feared this pre-trial detention”, reports one of his lawyers, Zoubida Assoul. His lawyers could not see him. They don’t have access to the file yet. Nor can they currently appeal the detention on the eve of the weekend in Algeria. But they already know that Ihsane el Kadi is facing several charges including financing from abroad to destabilize the country and distribution of information undermining national security.
Up to 14 years in prison
Criminal grievances, but potentially very heavy, likely to make him spend long years in prison. Indeed in the spring of 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, the Algerian regime strongly tightened its criminal legislation. Among other things, it introduced into its Penal Code an article 95 bis, according to which anyone who receives funds from a State or from an organization or person inside or outside the country, to carry out acts which undermine the state security or national unity, shall be punished by five to seven years’ imprisonment. The penalty can even be doubled. “when the funds are received within the framework of an association, a group, an organization or an agreement, whatever its form or denomination. »
This article “gives authorities excessive discretion to prosecute activists and human rights defenders receiving foreign funding”, had then denounced the Mena rights group, the NGO for the defense of rights in the North Africa Middle East region. Here we are. “Nearly everyone prosecuted for participating in the Hirak [fort mouvement de contestation qui avait eu raison du 5e mandat du président Bouteflika, NDLR] were released under article 95bis, some were released”, Zoubida Assoul wants to be reassuring.
“Cowardice characterizes thugs”
Ihsane el Kadi, founder and director of Interface media, a company that notably houses a web radio station, Radio M, and the emerging Maghreb news site, knew he had been in the sights of the authorities for a long time. For three years, the regime has given little respite to one of the last independent journalists who has a strong presence and whose notoriety goes beyond borders. Several times prosecuted, he was even recently sentenced on appeal to six months in prison, without a warrant, following an ubiquitous complaint by the former Minister of Communication Amar Belhimer who accused him of one of his articles published in March 2020. His business was raided and sealed on December 24.
The vast Algerian and international indignation and mobilization has so far done nothing to back down the regime, which is acting in the midst of a truce with the confectioners. “Cowardice characterizes thugs”, denounces the CNRS researcher Ali Bensaad on the site of Radio M. “Who can deny today the authoritarian drift of the regime and the slope of mediocrity on which the country is committed? he asks. How can we not understand that the arrest of Kadi El Ihsane is part of this drift, that it is a worrying high point”.