A military appeal court in Algeria acquitted this Saturday Saïd Bouteflika, the younger brother and ex-adviser of the deposed president Abdelaziz Bouteflika , and his three co-defendants, who had been sentenced to years in prison for “conspiracy Against the army and the state.
Following this surprise decision, Saïd Bouteflika will be transferred to a civilian prison pending his trial in d ” other cases related to corruption during the years of power of his brother, according to a judicial source. He had previously been detained in a military jail. He was recently placed under arrest warrant, accused of “influence peddling”, in connection with a case concerning the launch of a television channel supposed to promote the fifth presidential term of his older brother in 2019.
During the appeal trial this Saturday, open early in the morning, the generals Mohamed Mediène, known as “Toufik”, and Athmane Tartag, as well as the Trotskyist activist Louisa Hanoune, were also acquitted on appeal by the military court of Blida, near Algiers, according to the defense lawyer, Me Khaled Berghel, quoted by the APS news agency. Arrested in May 2017, the four accused had were sentenced in September of the same year to years’ imprisonment in a flash trial before the military court in Blida, for “conspiracy against the authority of the state and the army”.
They were accused of having met in March 2019 to develop a “destabilization plan” for the high command of the army which then publicly demanded the departure of President Bouteflika to get out of the crisis born of Hirak. This unprecedented popular uprising forced the Head of State to give up a new presidential mandate and to resign , under the combined pressure of the street and the army, in April 2017.
Influential advisor to Abdelaziz Bouteflika