Algeria: opposition activist leaves country after presidential pardon

Algerian opposition activist Rachid Nekkaz announced on Monday that he is leaving the country just three months after a presidential pardon saw him released from prison in January, Anadolu has reported. The pardon was granted by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune after Nekkaz, 51, said that he is retiring from politics. He made his announcement on Facebook alongside a photo of his passport and airline ticket to Barcelona.

At the time, local media reported that Nekkaz attributed his appeal to Tebboune for a pardon to his “difficult health situation”. He confirmed that he would be moving to live abroad in his political retirement.

In his Facebook post, the political activist said that he was making the move “without any resentment, desire for revenge, or regret.” After Spain, he intends to go to the US, where his wife and children live.

Nekkaz was imprisoned twice, first in 2019 and then in 2021, on charges of unauthorised assembly. He had lived in France, but in October 2013 he renounced his French citizenship to complete the legal procedures to stand as a candidate in the Algerian presidential election in April 2014. On that occasion, the late Abdelaziz Bouteflika won a fourth term in office. Nekkaz was unable to participate in the election because he did not collect enough signatures in support of his candidacy.

Before entering the political arena in Algeria, he was a businessman known in France for establishing a fund of one million euros in 2010 to pay the fines of Muslim women charged with breaking the French law banning the wearing of hijab. He called it the “Fund for the Defence of Freedom”.

At the time of writing, there had been no official comment from the Algerian authorities about Nekkaz’s post.

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