Newspaper columnist gets six-month jail sentence for libel

Reporters Without Borders today condemned a six-month prison sentence for libel passed on journalist Sid Ahmed Semiane (better known as "S.A.S.") and said it was alarmed at the Algerian government's continuing harassment of the independent press. "S.A.S.," who used to write for the daily Le Matin and currently lives in Paris, was sentenced in his absence on 4 November by a court in the Sidi M'hammed suburb of Algiers after complaints filed against by the defence ministry. The court also fined the paper's managing editor, Mohamed Benchicou, 100,000 dinars (€ 1,000 euros) and the newspaper itself another 200,000 dinars (€ 2,000). The same day, amid great publicity, Farid Alilat, managing editor of the daily Liberté, was given a four-month suspended prison sentence by an Algiers court and fined 100,000 dinars for "insulting the head of state" and one of his journalists, Rafik Hamou, was fined 100,000 dinars. The paper was fined two million dinars (€ 20,000) under article 144b of the amended criminal code for running a front-page headline on 11 August that read "All of them are thieves," over a story reprinted from the daily El Khabar saying top government figures had appropriated for themselves housing belonging to the foreign ministry. The sentencing of S.A.S. comes amid increasing harassment of the press, with more than 20 independent journalists summonsed by the authorities since September. The case also highlights the discomfort of the privately-owned press since, except for Le Quotidien d'Oran, they have not reported on it, perhaps because it involves a complaint by the army and not from the presidency.