Reuters
Algeria
The Supreme Court in Algeria decided to re-try the journalist, Khaled Dararni, who has been sentenced to two years in prison, according to his lawyers, after the Supreme Court accepted the cassation of the verdict.
“The Supreme Court annulled the decision … and the defense request to appeal the ruling was accepted, so Khaled Dararni will be retried,” Abdelghani Badi, a lawyer for Dararni, told AFP.
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Badi added, “I hope that no pressure will be placed on the judiciary during the new trial, as was the case in the past.”
During his trial in September, the Dararni Defense Lawyers Association denounced “pressure from the executive authority on judges who had fallen under influence.”
The 40-year-old freelance journalist who was imprisoned in March 2020 benefited from a presidential pardon last month that included detainees from the popular protest movement, and has since been in temporary freedom.
“We were expecting to accept the request for cassation, with the scheduling of a new trial, although we, of course, hoped that the charges would be dropped,” Drarney told AFP.
He added, “We hope with the lawyers that the new trial, the date of which will definitely be set in the coming months, will correct the two trials that I was subjected to in the first instance and in the Court of Appeal.”
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The director of the “Kasbah Tribune” news site and the correspondent of TV 5 Monde and “Reporters Without Borders” in Algeria were sentenced on 15 September to two years in prison, with validity for the charges of “inciting unarmed gathering” and “harming national unity.”
Khaled Dararni was arrested in Algiers on March 7, 2020, while he was covering a demonstration of the protest movement that began in Algeria two years ago.
Source: AFP
