The accused will not a priori be executed. An Algerian court sentenced 49 people to death on Thursday for the 2021 lynching in Kabylia of a man wrongly accused of arson. These sentences should be commuted to life imprisonment due to a moratorium on executions, according to the official agency. The defendants were found guilty of the lynching of Djamel Bensmaïl, an artist from Miliana (120 km west of Algiers) who had volunteered in the village of Larbaa Nath Irathen, in the prefecture of Tizi Ouzou (north- east), to help put out the forest fires which had killed 90 people in less than a week in August 2021. If the death penalty is indeed provided for by the Penal Code in Algeria, it is no longer applied under a moratorium in effect since 1993.
The defendants, who appeared before the court of Dar El Beida, in the eastern suburbs of Algiers, were prosecuted in particular for “terrorist and subversive acts against the State and national unity” and “intentional homicide with premeditation”, according to the ‘charge. Twenty-eight other defendants prosecuted in the context of this case were sentenced to terms ranging from two to ten years in prison and 17 were acquitted.
Man accused of causing fire
After hearing that he was suspected of having started the fire in the forest, Djamel Bensmaïl, who was 38 years old, had surrendered to the police. Images relayed by social networks had shown the crowd surrounding the police van and extricating the man from the vehicle after hitting him. Bensmaïl was then beaten and then burned alive, while young people took selfies in front of the corpse.
At the time of the events, which had raised a wave of indignation throughout the country, the images of the lynching which had gone viral were commented on in particular via the hashtag #JusticeForDjamelBenIsmail. Those who had taken selfies had tried to cover their tracks, but Internet users from all over the country compiled videos and took screenshots so that the crime which had marked the spirits by its horror does not go unpunished.