Police raid blocks broadcasting of satirical TV news programme
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is concerned to learn that the studios used to record a satirical news programme for the KBC TV channel have been raided by police and placed under seal. KBC, which is owned by the El Khabar media group, must be allowed to recover its equipment without delay, RSF said.
The raid was carried out on 19 June on the grounds that the studios were previously used by Atlas TV, a channel closed by the authorities in 2015. Ten episodes of the satirical programme, called “Ki hna ki ennass” and hosted by Mustapha Kessaci, have so far been broadcast.
After the raid, the public prosecutor’s office summoned seven people for questioning including KBC director Mahdi Benaissa and the building’s owners. The owners have been arrested.
“We are, to say the least, puzzled by the raid’s timing,” said Yasmine Kacha, the head of RSF’s North Africa desk. “While the legality of the judicial initiative cannot be disputed, it seems the authorities decided to act at the very moment that the studios were being used to record a current affairs programme.
“It is therefore fair to ask whether they were not in fact targeting the programme’s outspoken content, especially as the pro-government channel Numédia News used the studios a few weeks ago without any problem. We call on the authorities to let KBC recover its equipment from the studios so that the programme can resume being recorded in a completely independent manner.”
This latest case affecting the El Khabar media group comes just days after a court provisionally suspended the sale of part of the group’s shares to Ness Prod, a privately-owned Algerian company. In a statement, RSF said it was shocked by the decision and urged the authorities to respect the wishes of El Khabar’s owners and journalists.
Algeria is ranked 129th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
