Algeria arrests Salafist leader for protesting against Al-Sisi visit

The leader of the Algerian Free Islamist Salafist Awakening Front, Abdel Fattah Hemdash Zarawi, said his countries’ authorities arrested him for eight hours yesterday in central Algiers, after he participated in a protest against the visit of the new Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi.

Zarawi told Anadolu news agency: “I arrived to the Emir Abdelkader’s square in central Algiers to protest against Al-Sisi visit, but security forces arrested me and took me to a nearby police station, where I spent nearly eight hours before my release.”

He pointed out the protest aimed to “express our indignation and refusal of his visit and to tell our oppressed brothers in Egypt that Algerian men hate injustice and wrongdoing, and to tell the Algerian authorities that we refuse his visit to our country.”

The three Algerian Islamist opposition parties, including Zarawi’s party announced, in separate statements yesterday, their objection to Al-Sisi’s visit and considered it a “provocation” to the people and “a blow to the credibility of the Algerian diplomacy”, which condemned the coups in Africa over the past years.

Al-Sisi returned to Egypt on yesterday evening after a one day visit to Algeria, his first official foreign trip.