Courts urged to end newspaper editor's Kafkaesque nightmare

Reporters Without Borders today urged the Algerian justice system to put an end to its harassment of Le Matin editor Mohammed Benchicou, who is already serving a two-year sentence and who could now be convicted in two or possibly three separate libel cases on 7 December. "With at least 50 cases, with one trial after another, one lawsuit after another, hearings adjourned by judges and incomprehensible legal manoeuvres, Benchicou's legal ordeal is on a par with the absurdities and nightmarish procedures of the bureaucratic and partisan judicial system described in Franz Kafka's 'The Trial'," Reporters Without Borders said. "The authorities have already obtained the closure of Le Matin and the imprisonment of its editor - the time has come to think of showing moderation and clemency," the organisation added. Benchicou is being prosecuted in one of the pending cases for "offending the head of state," namely President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in an article in Le Matin on 31 December 2003 headlined "Time for an anti-Bouteflika front." Article 141 of the criminal code provides for up to a year in prison for this crime. The prosecutor has requested six months. Benchicou's lawyers pleaded in his defence in a hearing on 30 November. In another case, Benchicou is accused of "insulting the president of the republic" in a bylined column. And in a third case, a court in Sidi Mohammed is due to issue a verdict in an action brought against Benchicou and one of his journalists, Abla Chérif, over an article headlined "How I was tortured," about alleged atrocities by gendarmes in Tkout (90 km south of Batna in the Aurès) in May. The newspaper Le Soir d'Algérie reported that several of the victims travelled from Tkout to Algiers in order to testify at the trial on 24 November, confirming Chérif's account of their mistreatment and torture. Benchicou began serving a two-year prison sentence on 14 June for "violating the law governing exchange control and capital movements" on the grounds that certificates of deposit were found in his luggage at Algiers airport in August 2003. The sentence was confirmed in August. Le Matin opposed President Bouteflika during his campaign for re-election in April. Previously, in February, Benchicou published a scathing leaflet about him entitled, "Bouteflika, an Algerian imposter."