The scene shook journalists from Radio M and news site Maghreb Emergent: Ihsane El-Kadi, its director, was taken in handcuffs by agents on Saturday evening, December 24, to the headquarters of the two media outlets in central Algiers belonging to the Directorate General of Internal Security (DGSI). They conducted a search and confiscated computers and filming equipment before sealing the premises and exiting the premises.
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Ihsane El-Kadi, who runs Radio M, the last and fragile space for free debate in Algeria, was arrested on Friday night at his home in Zemmouri, in the Wilaya of Boumerdes, about sixty kilometers from Algiers. His daughter Tin Hinan said on social media that at half past midnight, a DGSI brigade of six in two vehicles ordered him to “follow them immediately to the Antar barracks” in Ben Aknoun on the heights of Algiers. Two hours earlier, Radio M’s website reports, Ihsane El-Kadi received a call urging him to report to this barracks immediately, but the journalist explained that he was far from the capital.
Ihsane El-Kadi was summoned to see Ben Aknoun on November 27: DGSI agents came to Interface Média headquarters and told him: “Follow us, you know the address. A reference to a previous forced visit to Antar Barracks on June 10, 2021, on the eve of general elections. Journalist Khaled Drareni and opponent Karim Tabbou were also arrested on this occasion and taken to the same place.
Judicial Harassment
Officially, no information was given as to the reasons for this renewed arrest. Is this a new article in which Ihsane El-Kadi conjured up the army’s stance on a possible second term for President Abdelmadjid Tebboune? is the noise last tweetin which he firmly denies the latter’s allegation about the recovery of $20 billion from the oligarchs who gravitated towards the clan of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika?
Observers lose themselves in guesswork. However, the sealing of the premises seems to indicate that the Algerian authorities have decided to put an end to what appears to be an anomaly: autonomous media in a media landscape under control.
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Ihsane El-Kadi, who has faced uninterrupted judicial harassment for more than three years — he was notably sentenced to six months in prison without a warrant in June 2021 for an opinion article on the position of Islamists in Hirak — remains in a context of total repression You unobtrusive. He continued to express himself freely while the country’s media was largely capitalized.
“The last samurai of the free press in Algeria”
Indeed, for many journalists and civil society actors, including those far from sharing Ihsane El-Kadi’s views, that explosive voice amidst general conformity was the last babble of an independent press. “Bad weather for freedom of the press and for all democratic freedoms in Algeria,” reacted Abdelouahab Fersaoui, President of the Rassemblement Actions Jeunesse (RAJ), which was dissolved by the authorities in October 2021. For him, Radio M and Maghreb Emergent were “the last samurai of the free press in Algeria”.
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As a precaution, the Board of Directors of Interface Média, the agency that brings together the two titles, noted on December 23 that the harassment from which “our media platform has suffered for three years has no basis other than to prevent free exercise of the profession of whistleblower guaranteed by all constitutions since February 1989″. The press release noted that the authorities are now “increasingly aimed at using various means to strip us of our established status as publishers of the electronic press”.
In addition to a very restrictive political context for freedoms, the Algerian media are experiencing a financial situation that makes them completely dependent on state advertising. Newspapers that appeared to be financially sound are also in crisis. Billionaire Issad Rebrab liquidated the Liberté newspaper before handing control over to his heirs. El Watan newspaper, whose accounts have been frozen due to tax arrears and unpaid loans, is unable to pay its staff. In these conditions of great precarity, a mobilization to preserve the space occupied by Radio M seems unlikely.