An Algerian court sentenced an editor-in-chief and a journalist at the Algiers-based independent daily El Watan to a three-month jail term each for defamation late last month.
Omar Belhouchet, editor of El Watan, and reporter Salima Tlemcani, were found guilty on December 23 last of defaming a faith healer and Islam in a 2004 article about the "charlatan-like practices" of the Algiers healer, said the journalists' lawyer, Khaled Bourayou. The lawyer told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that he was appealing the verdict.
After the story appeared, the Ethics Committee of the Algerian Physicians' Syndicate investigated the healer, eventually shuttering his practice. The man filed a defamation suit after that, Borayou said.
"It is deplorable that the court has handed down two prison terms in a case filed by a man who has since been prohibited from practicing by the authorities," said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa programme coordinator. "We call on the appeals court to overturn this verdict. Criminal defamation does not meet international standards of press freedom."
“The sentence is utterly disproportionate and, furthermore, more severe than what was requested,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “We called for the withdrawal of this prosecution but unfortunately we were ignored. Nonetheless, we reiterate our position: the Algerian authorities must stop systematically passing jail sentences for press offences.”
Dr Sebabou Mohamed, a licenced physician who turned to faith healing, claiming he could exorcise ghosts from his patients, filed a defamation lawsuit against Tlemcani after she wrote an investigative piece about his practice, Bourayou said.The physician-turned-healer did not testify at or attend any of the court proceedings, Bourayou told CPJ.
