Figure of the Algerian Hirak, Kaddour Chouicha, surrounded by the authorities, testifies

An urban couple, Kaddour Chouicha and Djamila Loukil, he vice-president of the Ligue algérienne des droits de l'homme, she a journalist with the daily newspaper Freedom, live in Oran. They are suspected of links with political Islam, a branch of which is based in Switzerland. The self-styled «secularists» deny everything. The democratic uprising, which began in 2019 and which they support, is said to have been infiltrated by Islamists. Kaddour Chouicha answered questions from Regard Libre.

On May 18, the Oran Indictment Chamber will decide the fate of Kaddour Chouicha and his wife Jamila Loukil. He is vice-president of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, and she is a journalist with the daily newspaper Freedom. Both are figures in the Hirak, the name given to the Algerian popular uprising in favor of democracy, which took shape in February 2019. Kaddour Chouicha and Jamila Loukil, currently on provisional release, are regularly harassed by their country's justice system, and face heavy sentences. They face the most intimidating of charges for political opponents, and at the same time the most common: conspiracy against the state, complicity with terrorism and cybercrime.

«It's a fabricated scenario. We human rights defenders have been under pressure for several years now,» asserts 64-year-old Kaddour Chouicha, contacted by Le Regard Libre. He and his partner are among «twenty or so defendants» in the same case. «We don't even know each other, it's all fabricated», insists the vice-president of the LADDH, who heads the Oran section. «This persecution of my wife and I is because we have lodged complaints of police violence, harassment and abuse of power», he explains.

For the past two years, the Algerian government, represented by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, has been alternating between periods of repression and relaxation towards the Hirak militants. In fact, since the resumption of the Friday marches associated with this movement, which claims to be the legitimate bearer of the ideals of the war of independence, against those who, he accuses, have arrogated them to themselves for decades at the head of the country.

Dozens of arrests were made in the Hirakist movement. Among them were Kaddour Chouicha and Jamila Loukil, as well as their friend Saïd Boudour, a journalist and human rights activist like themselves. Incarcerated and facing serious legal charges, they were released on the decision of a judge, against the advice of the Public Prosecutor, who appealed.

In 2019, Kaddour Chouicha was sentenced to one year in prison. Incarcerated for a month, he was released and then acquitted on appeal. His son, Adel, who holds a master's degree in genetic biology and had gone to welcome his father out of prison, was taken away in a police van, where he was beaten and given electric shocks with Tasers, he reports.

The severity of the charges against his parents can be traced back to Algeria's traumatic past, at once hyper-present and yet held at bay like a curse. Kaddour Chouicha and Jamila Loukil are suspected of having links with Rachad (righteousness, in Arabic), a movement born in 2007 from the Islamist movement in exile, which has branches in England, France and Switzerland, and includes former members of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), including Mourad Dhina in Geneva, as recalled by Le Temps on May 6 on its website.

Dissolved by the Algerian authorities, this revolutionary party, which wanted to introduce Islamic legislation in Algeria, was opposed by the entire «democratic» camp made up of intellectuals and journalists, some of whom wrote for the daily newspaper Freedom, was on the verge of winning the December 1991 legislative elections, when the electoral process was interrupted by the army, preluding a civil war that left over 100,000 dead.

«Everyone in Oran and Algeria knows that my wife and I are secularists,» Kaddour Chouicha defends himself. All it takes is for one of the Hirak militants to be a former member of the FIS for the authorities to wrongly label the whole group as Islamist." (Kaddour Chouicha, vice-president of LADDH)

Over the past few weeks in French-speaking Europe, media outlets that are not likely to be sympathetic to the Algerian regime (Le Temps, L'Humanité, ) have reported an «Islamist infiltration» into the ranks of the Hirak as the movement, which is no longer unanimously supported by the population, drags on.

Kaddour Chouicha regrets this presentation, which «repeats the narrative elaborated by the authorities» and which, in his view, aims to delegitimize the Hirakists as a whole. The vice-president of the LADDH nevertheless acknowledges the existence of various ideological sensitivities among them (the outraged reactions provoked in Algeria by the broadcast in May 2020 on a French channel of a documentary on the Hirak produced by a Franco-Algerian journalist had clearly underlined this, as we noted at the time.

Read also | Algeria's hirak and us: the end of innocence

For decades, the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights has been in the crosshairs of the authorities. For a long time, its charismatic leader, Me Ali Yahia Abdennour, had to fight against it. But his status as a hero of independence protected him. The government criticized the LADDH for, among other things, helping Islamist militants in court cases. The LADDH also embodies the so-called «dialogueist» political wing which, during the civil war, advocated a «political solution» to the tragedy afflicting Algeria.

Peaceful conflict resolution is the philosophy of Kaddour Chouicha, who advocates the establishment of a «state governed by the rule of law, with separation of powers». «We want to return to a political game, and those who refuse this always invoke an Islamist danger», laments the vice-president of the LADDH, who prefers a «political solution» to the «security management» of disputes, whatever they may be. We believe,« he concludes, by way of a profession of democratic faith, "that respect for human rights and the rule of law are essential. human rights is the basis of everything.»

Antoine Menusier is a journalist. Editor-in-chief of Bondy Blog from 2009 to 2011 and a former senior reporter at Time and L'Hebdo, he is the author of Livre des indésirés - A history of Arabs in France (Editions du Cerf, 2019). Today, he writes for the Swiss media outlet Watson and contributes to the French magazines Marianne and L'Express.