Algeria jails journalist for ‘defamation’

Algerian journalist Khaled Drareni carried by protesters will be retried next week while website Essafir’s Abdelhakim Setouane was jailed 6 months on Monday. (AFP)

• Journalist Abdelhakim Setouane’s lawyer said his client was detained on October 20 and will be released April 20
• Algeria’s symbol of struggle for a free press, journalist Khaled Drareni will be retried next week

ALGIERS – Algerian journalist Abdelhakim Setouane was jailed six months by a court on Monday for defaming a former speaker of the lower house of parliament, his lawyer said.
Abdellah Heboul told AFP that the journalist, who was detained on October 20, would be released on April 20 having spent six months behind bars.
Editor-in-chief of website Essafir, Setouane was convicted of defamation, “journalistic blackmail” and publishing “malicious information,” in the case filed by the interior ministry.
The case was motivated by his disclosure of an extramarital affair of the official, Slimane Chenine, according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which termed the trial “disproportionate.”
Several journalists have been sentenced to prison terms in recent months, including Khaled Drareni, a symbol of the struggle for a free press in Algeria. He is to be retried after the supreme court accepted his cassation appeal last week.
RSF ranked Algeria 146 out of 180 countries and territories in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index, a 27-place drop from 2015.