Algeria upholds 7-year jail term for French sports journalist

Journalist

Tizi-Ouzou –  An Algerian appeals court on Wednesday upheld a seven-year prison term for French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes, who was jailed in June on terrorism-related charges.

Gleizes, 36, is France’s only journalist imprisoned abroad, and his jailing comes at a time of diplomatic friction between Paris and Algiers.”This is a huge disappointment,” his lawyer, Emmanuel Daoud, told AFP.”All of this is very surprising… He’s a sports journalist, not a politics reporter.”

Gleizes was arrested and placed under judicial control in May 2024 after travelling to Tizi Ouzou in northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region — home to the Amazigh Kabyle people — to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie.

He was accused of “glorifying terrorism” and “possessing publications for propaganda purposes harmful to national interests”, according to media rights campaigners Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

He was also accused of illegally entering the country on a tourist visa to do news reporting, said RSF.

The group denounced the court’s decision “in the strongest possible terms” on Wednesday, saying Gleizes had “only done his job”.

In 2021, Gleizes met in Paris with the head of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), a foreign-based group designated a terrorist organisation by Algeria earlier that year.

 ‘Ashamed to admit it’ 

Gleizes said during Wednesday’s hearing that he did not know the MAK had been listed as a terrorist organisation when he met with its chief, Ferhat Mehenni, who lives in the French capital.

“I wasn’t aware of that, and I’m ashamed to admit it,” he told the court. “It reflects poorly on my competence. I completely missed that piece of information.”

“Despite my good intentions, I made many journalistic mistakes, for which I sincerely ask for forgiveness.”

Gleizes’s conviction came less than a month after Algeria pardoned French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, who had been jailed in the North African country for a year on national security charges.

Many, including relatives present at the hearing and his lawyer, had hoped Gleizes would be released on Wednesday.

The judge told him he had eight days to appeal with a cassation court.

The French foreign ministry decried the decision, and called for Gleizes’s release so he “can be quickly reunited with his loved ones”.

The defendant’s brother, Maxime Gleizes said he was “stunned” by the verdict, adding he hoped “this nightmare will end soon”.

Algeria’s diplomatic rift with France flared in July 2024 when Paris officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara.

Western Sahara is a major point of contention between Morocco and Algeria as Algiers backs the territory’s pro-independence Polisario Front.

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Source: AFP

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