Ali Ghediri will not be leaving his cell anytime soon. As he prepared to leave Koléa prison in June, the former presidential candidate in Algeria saw his sentence increased by the Algiers Court of Appeal on the night of Tuesday May 16 to Wednesday May 17. Sentenced to six years of criminal imprisonment and ten years of deprivation of his civic rights for “undermining the morale of army troops in peacetime”, he will have to remain behind bars until 2025.
The 69-year-old ex-general is being prosecuted for a 2018 interview with the French-language daily El Watan, in which he called on former defense minister and army chief of staff Ahmed Gaïd Salah to oppose a fifth term for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1999-2019). Arrested at home in June 2019, Ali Ghediri was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in September 2021. A verdict upheld on appeal five months later, but quashed in October 2022 by the Supreme Court, seized by the defense of the former soldier.
A new trial was therefore to take place, but Ali Ghediri’s lawyers did not expect their client to be called to appear less than a month before his release. His name, the defense said, did not appear on the scheduling table for the call session posted in April.
“We were on the precipice”
As in the two previous hearings, the ex-general denied having incited the military to intervene in the ballot and rejected the accusation made against him. “You don’t move an army with statements,” he defended, adding, “I couldn’t remain passive in the face of what was happening in my country. We were on the edge of the precipice. We wanted to propel [Abdelaziz Bouteflika] once again in a wheelchair to the head of state. »
An argument that did not convince the magistrates. After the prosecutor’s requisitions calling for a ten-year prison sentence, the judgment fell like a chopper in the middle of the night. “Cries and cries rang out in the room immediately. His family expected to see him free soon. He will have to spend two more years in prison away from them,” testifies a journalist who covered the trial.
The court’s decision was all the more surprising since the sentences are usually renewed or reduced on appeal. For Ali Ghediri and his defence, the verdict has no other purpose than to bar his way to the presidential election scheduled for the end of 2024. “This violation of procedure is a prelude to increasing Ali Ghediri’s sentence and the prevent him from standing as a candidate in the next elections, “said Me Khaled Bourayou during his argument, according to the Casbah Tribune news site. “The election campaign started today,” the former soldier told the judges.
“A devastating policy”
The shock wave generated by this condemnation has spread beyond the walls of the court. In a statement, the Union for Change and Progress (UCP), an opposition party chaired by lawyer Zoubida Assoul, denounced “a devastating policy”. “The UCP recalls that it is not by creating a void in the ranks of the opposition and in that of the discordant voices of Algerian civil society that we will succeed in elections that will give credibility to the power in place and restore the confidence in the eyes of the people [and] in the eyes of international opinion,” the statement read.
Initially, Ali Ghediri was prosecuted on a second charge of “intelligence with foreigners” alongside Hocine Gouasmia, leader of the Forum de l’Algérie de Maroc party, whom the former presidential candidate had met as he collected signatures for his presidential candidacy. Facts requalified before the first instance trial.
Tried again at the same hearing as Ali Ghediri, Hocine Gouasmia also saw his sentence extended. First sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for “forgery and use of forgery”, “usurpation of office” and “intelligence with foreigners”, he was sentenced on May 17 to twelve years in prison.
