ALGIERS, Algeria – An Algerian journalist has been expelled from the country after arriving from France and not being allowed to leave the airport, as journalists continue to face challenges reporting in Algeria.
Farid Alilat, a writer for the French magazine Jeune Afrique, wrote on Facebook that he spent 11 hours in police custody on Saturday at the airport before being loaded onto a plane and sent to France, where he has a residence permit.
Alilat said he regularly flies from Paris to Algiers to report on Algeria, where he has for years been a well-known journalist due to his work for French-language daily newspapers, including Liberté, which closed in 2022 amid financial problems and fights. with the government and the Algerian state oil company, both major advertisers in the country’s newspapers.
In a long post in which he wrote about his deportation as if he were reporting, Alilat claimed that police officers at the Algiers tarmac told him they were acting under orders “from above”.
He said he was questioned about his travels, who he met and about Jeune Afrique, which Algerian authorities believe favors its neighbor and regional rival, Morocco.
“I completely understand that my articles are a source of irritation. I am a free journalist. I cover my country’s news as a free and independent journalist,” Alilat wrote, noting that he did not receive any verbal or written explanation for his expulsion.
He wrote that he had never heard of any issues from Algerian law enforcement or courts regarding his articles, including during a reporting trip in December 2023.
In a statement published on X, Reporters Without Borders classified Alilat’s expulsion as “an unacceptable obstacle to press freedom”.
Few Algerian media reported Alilat’s expulsion and few politicians commented on the matter. Former Communications Minister Abdelaziz Rahabi called it “a measure from another time that serves neither the people nor the government.”
“No one can be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter their own country,” he wrote on Facebook.
The episode is the latest example of the Algerian government restricting journalists from reporting in Algeria and comes as high-profile journalists, including editors Ihsane El Kadi and Mustapha Benjama, remain in prison on charges relating to the use of foreign funds to finance journalism and disturbing public order.
The government, however, has also resumed granting permits to journalists starting new media outlets or television programs, and last year passed a law enshrining new protections for journalists.
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