Algeria amnesties journalists
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=16373
2006-05-03
Bouteflika keeps his major critic Mohamed Benchicou behind bars for his common law offence.
ALGIERS – Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika marked Press Freedom Day Wednesday day by amnestying jailed journalists, but one major regime critic remained behind bars.
The president, trying to restore normality to a country racked by civil war, amnestied pressmen jailed for insulting public officials, offending the president and defamation, an official communique said Tuesday.
The measure reflected « Algeria’s irrevocable commitment on the path to democracy and political pluralism, » it said.
But Mohamed Benchicou, the most celebrated of the inmates, will stay in jail, his attorney said.
« Benchicou is not affected because he was convicted for a common law offence, » said lawyer Khaled Bourayou.
Benchicou, head of the newspaper Le Matin and a strong critic of the regime, was given two years for breaking exchange control legislation after treasury bonds were found in his luggage at Algiers airport.
Tuesday’s presidential communique on the amnesty did not cover the offence for which he was convicted.
The amnesty also applied only to journalists who had been definitively convicted after appeal, and not to those whose appeals were still pending. Bourayou said the amnesty text made it clear only those whose final appeals had already been quashed would be amnestied. « There are not a lot of them, » he said.
Some 20 journalists, sentenced to terms of between one year and three months, are still awaiting results of appeals.
The amnesty communique said the measure, « which expresses the constant concern of the head of state to preserve, consolidate and strengthen press freedom, is an additional security in safeguarding rights and freedoms in our country, a safeguard to which the national press greatly contributes. »
On Wednesday Algeria’s privately-owned press, which has strongly condemned Benchicou’s conviction, welcomed the amnesty as a major gesture and « signal of appeasement » to improve government-press relations.
Relations between government and Algeria’s privately-owned press have been particularly strained since Bouteflika came to power in 1999 with a mission to wind down more than a decade of horrendous violence between Islamic extremists and the authorities.
Last year Bouteflika said « the evil this press is doing to the country is comparable to that of the terrorists. We cannot dialogue with those who pour oil on the flames with murderous pens. »
But Algeria has come under criticism at home and abroad for official treatment of journalists.
The Paris-based International Human Rights Federation (FIDH) and the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH) published a statement last year saying they had « noted with concern the succession of prosecutions of journalists and media companies. »
While a number of Algerian journalists have been given severe sentences for such offences as defamation or insulting the head of state, others have been convicted on trumped up evidence, according to colleagues.
