Authorities try to block reports of FIS releases by pressuring journalists

Reporters Without Borders condemned the attempts of the Algerian authorities to censor news coverage of the release today of two historic leaders of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj, on completion of their prison sentences. The government's efforts were targeted foreign journalists, including those based in Algeria and visiting special correspondents. "This ban affecting the entire press corps is truly shocking and virtually unprecedented," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said. Only a few regimes had tried in recent times to impose a news blackout on a specific event, he said, citing the arrest of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma in May and the SARS epidemic in China in April. Warnings issued in telephone calls by the Algerian communication ministry and threats to withdraw the accreditation of foreign journalists were "crude and archaic methods," Ménard said. It was illusory of the Algerian authorities to imagine they could prevent all news of the releases getting out, he added.