ALGIERS, 18 December 2005 — Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was released from a Paris military hospital yesterday, at the end of a three-week stay shrouded in secrecy, his doctor and French officials said. But controversy over the news coverage of the president’s illness continued with the Algerian state and private media at odds over the information, or lack of it, about the president’s state of health.
His doctor said he was well but a spokeswoman for the hospital simply confirmed he had been discharged, without giving further details. An informed Algerian source in Paris said Bouteflika was in a rest home in the Paris region.
The source, who was not identified, did not say how long the leader would stay in the home but another source, in Algiers, said it would be several days.
“The health of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is developing well and there is a very good prognosis as a result of the surgery he had,” his doctor Messaoud Zitouni said in a statement from Paris, carried by the Algerian APS news agency.
“During his stay in hospital his doctors prescribed additional check-ups as part of an in-depth health examination,” said the doctor, who had accompanied Bouteflika to Paris.
“As the results of the check-ups were satisfactory, the doctors decided that the president should be released from hospital,” the statement said. “The president has been advised to rest before resuming his national and international activities,” it added.
Boutelfika’s release from the Val de Grace military hospital was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the French army’s health service, Anne Robert, who also gave no further details, including on his state of health.
The Algerian source added that an Algerian television crew had flown to Paris and that the leader might speak on the North African country’s evening news.
A lack of official information about Bouteflika’s health since he was hospitalized on Nov. 26 had fueled speculation that his condition might be more serious than publicly admitted.
A Dec. 5 medical bulletin said he had undergone surgery for a bleeding stomach ulcer. Algiers dismissed as “crazy rumors” the speculation about Bouteflika’s illness and had said he was making a normal recovery in hospital.
But independent newspapers continued yesterday to attack what they called an “information embargo” while the state-run media, and especially television, applauded “transparency” and lashed out at “tendentious” comment in foreign media.
El Watan called on the authorities to publish a full account of Bouteflika’s state of health “to put the brakes on this destabilizing spiral of rumor” accompanied by television pictures.
On Friday the Algerian rai singer Cheb Mami said he had visited Bouteflika the day before and found him “really well.”
“When Cheb Mami becomes a source of news about the state of health of the president, senior figures in the government should be sent into compulsory retirement,” the conservative Ech-Chorouk newspaper remarked.
State media retaliated by praising the president for avoiding “exhibitionism, still less disinformation and lies.” State radio attacked “perfidious gossip” in the Moroccan media and some French outlets.
