Algerian journalist Ihsane El Kadi, 65, was released from prison in late October after serving 22 months of detention. He was pardoned by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, along with 4,000 other prisoners, marking the anniversary of the war of independence in which El Kadi’s father played a pioneering role.
677 jours en prison!
Une pensée pour Nabil Mellah et les autres détenus politiques.
@ElkadiIhsane
pic.twitter.com/437Yjp3MPf— Ihsane El Kadi Solidaires (@ekisolidaires)
November 1, 2024
Above: El Kadi reunites with his wife, Djamila Ait Yala, and daughter, Tin Hinane El Kadi, upon his release on Oct. 31. The caption reads, “677 days in prison!” and acknowledges the endured imprisonment of Nabil Mellah, a businessman who served as the official sponsor and advertiser for El Kadi’s publication, Radio M.
El Kadi’s previous arrests, in 1980, 2021 and 2022, spanned the government’s disparate experiments in governing; from a push toward democracy to a crackdown on dissent.
For his third arrest, El Kadi was at home in December 2022 when plainclothes officers entered and arrested him. The charges concerned his company Interface Media, which houses two outlets, Radio M and Maghreb Emergent. He was prosecuted under charges of receiving funds “that could harm the security of the state” and receiving foreign funds “for political propaganda.”
In April 2023, a court in the Sidi M’Hamed municipality sentenced El Kadi to five years in prison, including two on probation. The court also ordered his publications, Radio M and Maghreb Emergent, to close.
El Kadi has denied these charges, according to SHOAA for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization that monitors human rights abuses in Algeria. He has said the transaction in question involved his daughter who lives in London and is a shareholder in Interface Media.
The Algerian Embassy did not respond to three requests for comment in November and December 2024.
The day before his 2022 arrest, El Kadi posted two statements criticizing the government. On X, formerly known as Twitter, he doubted Tebboune’s recent announcement that Algeria earned $20 billion from the prosecution of an embezzlement case. On Radio M, he discussed the possibility of Tebboune serving a second term and raised the possibility of a boycott of the presidential election.
El Kadi is a well-known economic journalist and pro-democracy commentator. Nadir Senhadji, project officer for the Middle East and Arab World at the International Federation of Journalists said he is known to be “hyperactive” in national politics.
In April, the Algerian government increased penalties for defaming state institutions and said disseminating information critical of the government or the army “harms the interests of the Algerian state,” signifying a tightening of restrictions on the press.
El Kadi’s pardon came after an Algiers court of appeals in June 2023 upheld El Kadi’s sentence, extending it to seven years from five.
“The Algerian authorities often do this,” Nadege Lahmar, Amnesty International’s North Africa Researcher, said. “They often periodically release a certain number of detainees. This is part of a wider pattern in Algeria.”
A pendulum of persecution
In December 1954, in the vast desert on the outskirts of Tripoli, Libya, El Kadi’s father, Bachir, sat in a Jeep bound for the Tunisian border, he shared in a 2004 interview. The vehicle, purchased by Ahmed Ben Bella—the revolutionary leader who would later become Algeria’s first president—was loaded with weapons for the country’s war of independence against French colonial rule.
El Kadi witnessed his father’s role in the central committee of the National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1964. Since ascending to power following the Hirak protest movement, which opposed the dominance of then-President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has sought to distance himself from the FLN, a party that remains influential in Algeria today.
Since his father’s era, El Kadi has seen his country undergo numerous protest movements and political shifts, reflecting a turbulent history marked by cycles of dissent and repression.
In 1980, Ihsane El Kadi was arrested for the first time after he marched in the Berber Spring protests, a movement advocating for the rights of Algeria’s most prominent minority group, the Amazigh. At age 22, he spent nine months imprisoned at El Harrach prison, one of Algeria’s most infamous for political dissidents.
The decade following his first arrest was marred by political instability. The October Riots of 1988,set off by rising prices and fueled by a deep contempt for the political status quo, saw nationwide youth protests topple the one-party system, and Algeria entered a new era of pluralism.
This meant the opening of the electoral system, allowing other parties to gain power.
The attempt to democratize failed, and in 1992 Algeria entered a decade-long civil war. During this time, journalists were often the targets of violent attacks by Islamist militants.
El Kadi was by then editor-in-chief of La Tribune, a French-language newspaper revered for investigating individuals who had disappeared during the civil war.
It was also during this time that the Algerian press and military intelligence began an unusually close relationship, according to Robert S. Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Algeria from 2006 to 2008.
This alliance protected the press from serious government clampdowns, Ford said.
“The paper could rely on military intelligence to sort of tell the president, ‘Don’t push this too hard,’ because Bouteflika was not Joseph Stalin,” he said.“You could even read Islamist viewpoints in the press despite the civil war.”
However, over the 20 years of Bouteflika’s rule, he consolidated power little by little, Ford said, subtly squeezing the life out of independent newspapers that were critical of the government. He said the state-owned advertising agency, ANEP, began to withhold lucrative advertising revenue from critical publications.
According to Adama Wade, a former colleague of El Kadi from the finance newspaper Les Afriques, El Kadi never spoke of any problems with the Algerian government during this time. The two worked together during a period of relative peace compared to the bloodied conflicts preceding it.
Adama also spoke to El Kadi’s nationalistic fervor, describing him as a “great patriot.”
“When I was told that yes, he had been arrested because he had received foreign funding, that he was suspected of being involved in plots against his country, I said, ‘No, that’s impossible,’” Adama said.
Political change and press crackdown
Six days after Bouteflika announced he would stand for a fifth term in 2019, the Hirak movement drew thousands into the streets, demanding the president resign and the government commit to democracy. The protesters called for a cleaning out of the current political power.
“Things always get worse during election times because there is more political activity,” said Marina Ottaway, Middle East fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There is more open opposition, and then there is more repression.”