Newspaper harassed by police

Reporters Without Borders expressed concern today about police harassment of the Algerian daily newspaper Le Matin and its managing editor, Mohammed Benchicou. Benchicou told the press freedom organisation yesterday that police had made no written record of searching him at Algiers airport on 23 August. He said he had been summoned by detectives and feared he would be arrested in the next few days. The authorities intended to shut down the paper, he said, and police had ordered its bank manager not to issue a certified cheque the paper needed to pay off its last debts to the state printing firm. Benchichou said three-quarters of the debt had already been paid. Very few Algerian newspapers disclose their annual accounts or their daily print-run. Their failure to comply with the law in this way is not formally punished but left in limbo by the authorities as a way of intimidating, censoring and blackmailing them. The state printers are also deliberately lax and allow debts to build up over a long time, finally calling them in as a way to prevent some papers from publishing. As well as this arbitrary and legally grey situation, the poisonous climate of the 2004 presidential election campaign, which has started very early, also threaten press freedom. Several of the country's newspapers have closed down since the state printers gave six papers an ultimatum to settle their sometimes huge debts. Liberté and El-Khabar paid up and continued to be printed, but Le Matin, Le Soir d'Algérie, L'Expression and Er-Raï have not appeared since 18 August.