Police harass seven more journalists

Reporters Without Borders deplored the harassment of seven journalists on the daily paper Liberté, including managing editor Farid Alilat, who were summoned today without explanation before police detectives. "These summonses are part of the authorities' game involving media debts towards state printing firms," said the press freedom organisation's secretary-general, Robert Ménard. "The regime is obviously annoyed that most indirectly-censored privately-owned newspapers have reappeared and is looking for new ways to keep pressure on them. Even if Liberté is being accused of libel, there is no need for journalists to be interrogated for days at a time by police. This is simply being done to harass them." The six others summoned, apart from Alilat, are former managing editor Outoudert Abrous, columnist Mustapha Hammouche, editor Saïd Chekri, cartoonist Ali Dilem and journalists Mourad Belaïdi and Rafik Benkaci. Alilat and three of the paper's journalists were earlier summoned on 27 and 28 August and interrogated about articles exposing high-level government corruption, going right up to the entourage of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Mohamed Benchicou, managing editor of Le Matin, has been put under formal investigation since he was summoned by a prosecutor on 26 August after a formal complaint by the finance ministry for allegedly violating rules about foreign currency exchange and movement of funds. Of six newspapers asked on 18 August to immediately repay their debts to the state-owned printers, only L'Expression and Er-Raï were unable to do so and have not reappeared. Liberté, Le Matin, Le Soir d'Algérie and El-Khabar, which have published most of the reports about top-level corruption, paid up and have resumed publication.