ALGIERS, 4 July 2003 — Algeria yesterday ordered foreign television journalists who had come to the North African country to cover the release of two leaders of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party, to leave the country, one of the foreign reporters told AFP. “The Algerian authorities did not appreciate our broadcasting images of the liberation on Wednesday evening” of FIS leaders Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj, said the journalist, who asked not to be named.

“The authorities have asked us to leave so as to avoid giving too much publicity to Belhadj,” he added. On Wednesday, the Communications Ministry asked foreign media networks not to cover the release of Belhadj, FIS’ second in command who came to the fore of Algeria’s radical political scene in the 1980s by giving fiery anti-government speeches in the mosques of Algiers.

Belhadj was the last remaining FIS official still in prison when he was released from a military jail in Blida, 50 kilometers south of Algiers, on Wednesday. Madani, who had been sentenced to jail with Belhadj in July 1992, was released from prison in 1997 and placed under house arrest at his home in the capital.

Both men were issued with a court order barring them from speaking in public or resuming political activities as soon as they were released. Belhadj refused to sign the order. The official reason given by the authorities for the journalists’ expulsion was “undermining the sovereignty of the state,” the foreign reporter told AFP.

France’s privately owned TF1, state-run France 2 and 3, and the Parliamentary Channel (LCP) were all ordered to quit Algeria, as was Belgium’s national RTBF. The TF1 team left Algiers yesterday morning. The other networks were due to pull their teams out later in the evening.

The FIS was yesterday back in the political limelight after two of its leaders were let out of jail, as opponents blamed the pair for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Algerians in the country’s 11-year civil war.

“Ali Belhadj must pay for the assassinations and the massacres he instigated,” said Cherifa Keddar, president of Dazairouna, one of many associations set up by relatives of people murdered in the conflict. A former FIS leader, Ali Djeddi, said yesterday he hoped their release might be “a sign of hope that we are emerging from the crisis,” and that the two men could play an important role in bringing an end to the violence.

But Djeddi did not explain just how they might do this, given that the pair were issued with a court order upon their release banning them from political activity, from voting or standing in elections, and from “taking part in any political, social, cultural or religious activities.”

El Hachemi Cherif, secretary-general of the left-leaning opposition Democratic and Social Movement (MDS), said he believed Belhadj would ignore the ban on political activity.