Algeria journalist released after year in jail, rights group says

Algeria gave prison time to a journalist charged with "spreading false information" but released him as he had already served his sentence, a rights group said on Wednesday.

Mohamed Mouloudj, of defunct daily newspaper Liberté, was handed overnight into Wednesday a year in prison and another one-year suspended sentence, according to the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees (CNLD).

As he had already spent more than 13 months in pre-trial detention, the group said the court in the Algiers suburb of Dar El Beida ordered his immediate release.

Six other defendants in the same case who had been detained since September 2021 were also released.

They were all acquitted of terrorism charges that had been brought against them, said defence attorney Hakim Saheb.

The prosecution had initially sought a 10-year prison sentence for Mouloudj and 12 to 15 years for the other defendants, the CNLD said.

Mouloudj was arrested on 13 September 2021 along with 15 others accused of membership of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabliye, a separatist group that Algeria considers a "terrorist" organisation.

They were apprehended in connection with an investigation into deadly forest fires a month earlier in the northeastern Kabliye region, a stronghold of the Amazigh minority.

Former colleagues said the security service had questioned Mouloudj several times before his arrest and confiscated his passport for a few months.

The Dar El Beida court on Tuesday also ordered the release of human rights activist El Hadi Lassouli after 16 months behind bars, the CNLD said.

Local media reported that Lassouli, co-founder of the CNLD, was acquitted of charges relating to the financing of aid to detainees during the 2019 Hirak protest movement.

Ten other people charged in the same case were all released, the group said. Some of them were acquitted and the rest had completed a one-year prison sentence.