Police arrested Algerian opposition figure Fethi Ghares, who has been convicted and imprisoned in the past, on Tuesday and took him to an unknown location, according to his wife and the National Committee for the Liberation of Prisoners (CNLD).
A well-known activist in the left-wing and secular opposition, Fethi Ghares, 49, joined the popular Hirak protest movement in 2019, which demanded a radical change in the system of governance in place since independence in 1962.
The CNLD announced “the arrest this morning of the leader of the MDS (Democratic and Social Movement, banned), the former prisoner of conscience, Fethi Ghares, at his home and taken to the central police station in central Algiers”.
Mr. Ghares was arrested at 9:00 GMT by three plainclothes officers at his home in Algiers, his wife said. “They told him he had to be held accountable, but they didn’t show him any summons,” she added in a video on Facebook.
The police assured his wife that he would be taken to the nearby police station, but once there, other officers assured her that he was not there.
No official announcement about this arrest has been made.
Arrested and imprisoned at the end of June 2021 during the Hirak, the pro-democracy movement that succeeded in ousting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power, the opponent was sentenced in January 2022 at first instance to two years in prison.
He was released in March 2022 after receiving a reduction in his sentence on appeal.
Mr. Ghares had been prosecuted for “attacking the person of the President of the Republic”, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, “insulting a constituted body” and “disseminating information that could undermine national unity” and “public order”.
His left-wing movement MDS, successor to the Algerian Communist Party, was banned in February 2023.
This arrest takes place approximately 15 days before the presidential election of September 7, in which President Tebboune is seeking a second term.