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10 years in jail for Algeria blogger

May 25, 2018 at 8:55 am

Algeria has sentenced a blogger to ten years in jail after finding him guilty of providing intelligence to “agents of a foreign power,” his lawyer said.

The criminal court in Bejaia, east of Algiers, found 30-year-old Merzoug Touati guilty of providing “intelligence to agents of a foreign power likely to harm Algeria’s military or diplomatic position or its essential economic interests,” Boubakeur Esseddik Hamaili told AFP.

Other charges, including those of incitement against the state, were dropped.

Algerian blogger Merzoug Touati was handed a 10-year term for posts he made on Facebook [Amnesty International]

Algerian blogger Merzoug Touati was handed a 10-year term for posts he made on Facebook [Amnesty International]

Touati was detained in January 2017 after he called for protests against a new financial law on Facebook, he also published an interview with an Israeli ministry spokesperson.

“Merzoug Touati is a blogger who has only exercised his rights guaranteed by the constitution. He is free to talk with whomever he wants, and to say whatever he wants,” he said.

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After attending the hearing, Said Salhi of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights called it a “one-sided trial.”

“There were no defense witnesses, the witnesses cited by the defense, we did not see them,” he told AFP by telephone.

Salhi said Touati looked “truly shattered” by the verdict, adding he was visibly thin and weak.

The blogger has undergone seven hunger strikes since his arrest, according to Salhi.

In a statement ahead of the trial, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Director Heba Morayef, said:

Every day Merzoug Touati spends in prison is one day too many, and is a further stain on Algeria’s human rights record … Touati represents the broken dreams of a generation in a country where freedom of expression has been repeatedly undermined.