More journalists arrested

Reporters Without Borders today again deplored the Algerian authorities' continuing harassment of journalists working for the country's non-government media and said it hoped the first "open" press conference today by prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia, at which the suspension of independent newspapers was due to be raised, would result in ending the legalistic crackdown against many of them. The latest arrests included Ahmed Fattani, publisher of the daily paper L'Expression, on 13 October, and Kamel Amarni, of Le Soir d'Algérie, on 9 October . Both were picked up at their newspapers' offices and taken to the main police station in Algiers. Ahmed Oukil, publisher of Erraï el Aam, and Slimane Bensayah, editor of the daily Le Journal de l'Ouest, were also arrested at night on 8 October. "The machinery of intimidation, which has now been going on for more than a month, sometimes backed by local business interests, is trying to force the independent press to censor itself," said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard. "But the media is still resisting this daily harassment in an increasingly-tense pre-election atmosphere." Articles criticising the allies of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, or even the president himself, result in the immediate summoning of journalists, who jointly decided early last month to fight on and to only discuss what they had written before a judge, not the police. After three summonses, they are usually arrested, mostly for "insulting the head of state," taken to a police station, interrogated by legal officials and then released. The process sometimes involves digging up of old common law cases against journalists and media owners to discourage media investigation of local business scandals.