Ihsane El Kadi, An Algerian Journalist, Was Condemned To Five Years In Prison.

According to AFP, Algerian journalist Ihsane El Kadi has been sentenced to three years in jail by the Sidi M’Hamed court in Algiers for “foreign funding of his enterprise.” El Kadi, who controls one of the country’s few independent media organizations and is critical of the government, was sentenced to five years in prison on Sunday by the court. Moreover, the court ordered that Interface Media, which owns Maghreb Emergent and another channel owned by El Kadi, Radio M, be dissolved. The court imposed fines of 11.7 million Algerian dinars ($86,200) on the corporation and El Kadi himself.

The journalist was seized on December 24 and has been jailed since under a state security statute that bars collecting funds that undermine state security or “national unity,” according to the news website he manages, Maghreb Emergent. Following the journalist’s arrest, Interface Media’s premises were blocked off and its records were taken. “We will challenge this decision within the term allowed,” Abdelghani Badi, one of El Kadi’s attorneys who skipped the session, told AFP. El Kadi’s defense team has denied the foreign funding claims, claiming that the sole foreign transfer to El Kadi’s firm came from his daughter, who lives in the United Kingdom and deposited 25,000 British pounds ($31,000) to the company in which she is a partner. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and journalists’ rights organizations such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists have all criticized El Kadi’s detention (CPJ).

Thousands of people signed a petition appealing for his release. CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour had termed El Kadi’s detention an assault to Algerian independent media in December, urging authorities to “stop harassing the journalists.” “By detaining journalist Ihsane El Kadi and closing down Radio M and Maghreb Emergent, Algerian authorities are attempting to silence some of the country’s remaining independent voices,” Mansour added.