Algeria mob justice could land 70 people death sentence
More than 70 people charged with torturing a man could face the death penalty in Algeria, according to Middle East Monitor (MEMO). Altought the death sentence is still applicable in Arab Maghreb Union, it is rarely if ever practiced, unlike GCC countries.
On Monday 21st of the November the London based news site reported that the Algerian Public Prosecution requested, on Saturday 19th November, the death penalty against more than 70 people charged with torturing a man, who they wrongfully believed guilty of starting a forest fire.
According to local reports, they burnt him alive and mutilated his body on 11 August 2021 in the Kabylia region.
Some 25 other defendants are also being tried in the case and the Public Prosecution requested they be handed ten-year prison sentences after charging them with “armed gathering” and “spreading terror among the population and creating an atmosphere of insecurity” through photographing the crime and mutilating the dead man’s body, and publishing photos and videos of this brutality.”
Thirty-eight-year-old Jamal voluntarily went to the district of Larbaa Nath Irathen in Tizi Ouzou in the northwest of the country to help put out forest fires that killed at least 90 people in a week. He then learned that some residents suspected him of being involved in starting the fires because he was a stranger to the region, so he handed himself in to the police.
Those accused of murdering Jamal Ben Ismail are being tried in Algiers for “committing terrorist and subversive acts targeting state security and national unity” and “participating in the deliberate and wilful killing.”
