An Algerian court on Thursday sentenced 49 people to death for the mob killing of a painter who had been suspected of starting devastating wildfires — but had actually come to help fight them, according to defense lawyers and the state news agency.
The killing in the Kabylie region of northeast Algeria last year shocked the country, especially after graphic images of it were shared on social media.
It came as the mountainous Berber region was reeling from wildfires that killed about 90 people, including soldiers trying to tame the flames.
Photo: AFP
The mammoth, high-security trial over artist Djamel Ben Ismail’s killing involved more than 100 suspects, most of whom were found guilty of some role in his death.
However, those sentenced to death are likely to face life in prison instead, because Algeria has had a moratorium on executions for decades.
Thirty-eight others were given sentences of between two and 12 years in prison, said lawyer Hakim Saheb, member of a collective of volunteer defense lawyers at the trial in the Algiers’ suburb of Dra El Beida.
As the wildfires raged in August last year, Ben Ismail wrote on Twitter that he would head to the Kabylie region, 320km from his home, to “give a hand to our friends” fighting the fires.
Upon his arrival in Larbaa Nath Irathen, a village hit hard by the fires, some local residents accused him of being an arsonist, apparently because he was not from the area.
Ben Ismail, 38, was killed outside a police station on a main square of the town.
Police said he was dragged out of the station, where he was being protected, but also attacked.
Among those on trial were three women and a man who knifed the victim’s inanimate body before he was burned.
Police said photographs posted online helped them identify suspects.
However, his distraught family questioned why those filming did not try to save him instead.
The trial also had political undertones.
Five people were convicted in absentia, for involvement in the killing and for belonging to or supporting the banned Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie, Saheb said.
The movement’s leader, Ferhat M’henni, based in France, was among them.
Algerian authorities accused the movement of ordering the fires.
Defense lawyers said confessions were coerced under torture and called the trial a political masquerade aimed at stigmatizing Kabylie.
At the time of the fires, the region was the last bastion of the “Hirak” pro-democracy protest movement that helped bring down former Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Hundreds of Algerians have been jailed for trying to keep alive the Hirak movement, whose marches have been banned by the army-backed Algerian government.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS