AN Algerian court on Tuesday sentenced opposition figure Fethi Ghares to two years in prison over a Facebook post judged to have insulted President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, his lawyer told AFP.
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Ghares, a secular leftist opposition figure, was sentenced “to two years in prison for remarks concerning the president”, lawyer Abdelghani Badi said.
He said the court did not order Ghares’s immediate detention, adding that the defence team will file an appeal.
Badi said Ghares, who is not in custody, did not attend the hearing.
Lawyer Fetta Sadat, another member of his defence, wrote on Facebook that Ghares was also ordered to pay a fine of 300,000 dinars ($2,300), adding that prosecutors had sought a three-year sentence and the same fine.
Sadat said Ghares was tried on charges of “insulting a state institution” and “spreading false or malicious information likely to harm public order or security”.
Ghares, 50, had already been convicted in another case in May last year on similar charges and sentenced to one year in prison, though he was not jailed pending appeal to the Supreme Court.
He has previously been arrested in 2021 and was later sentenced to prison on charges including insulting the president.
All charges, including the most recent ones, stemmed from posts he made on Facebook.
A figure from Algeria’s secular leftist opposition, Ghares in 2019 joined the pro-democracy Hirak movement mass protests that swept veteran president Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power.
His Democratic and Social Movement party — successor of the Algerian Communist Party was banished in February 2023.
