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.
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