In March, a court in Ghardaia referred human rights lawyer Salah Dabouz of LADDH to trial in relation to comments he made on television about unrest in Ghardaia and for allegedly carrying a computer and camera during a visit to detained activists. The court had kept him under judicial supervision from July 2016 until March 2017, forcing him to travel more than 600km twice a week to report to the court in Ghardaia from his home in Algiers. In April, the investigative judge at a court in Medea transferred a case against human rights lawyer Noureddine Ahmine of the Network of Lawyers for the Defence of Human Rights (RADDH) to a court in Ghardaia for trial on charges of “insulting a public institution” and “falsely” reporting an offence. The charges related to a complaint of torture that he had filed, apparently on behalf of someone else, in 2014. UNFAIR TRIALS In May, a court in Medea unfairly convicted the founder of the Movement for the Autonomy of the Mzab (MAM), Kamaleddine Fekhar, and 21 of his 41 co-defendants of murder, terrorism and other serious offences, for their alleged role in communal violence in Ghardaia province between 2013 and 2015 which left an estimated 25 people dead.2 They were sentenced to prison terms of between three and five years, partially suspended. All were then released between May and July 2017 after having served their sentence. Among the 41 defendants, 37 had been in pre-trial detention, many since 2015. In July, the Spanish authorities detained MAM activists Salah Abbouna and Khodir Sekkouti after Algerian authorities filed an extradition request against them, citing their criticism of Algerian authorities on Facebook. In October the Spanish authorities released both activists on bail awaiting the National High Court’s decision on extradition. FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND BELIEF More than 280 members of the minority Ahmadi religious movement were prosecuted in relation to their religious beliefs and 72 practices during the year.3 From April onwards, courts released 16 Ahmadis after reducing or suspending their sentences, while dozens of others remained under investigation or on trial and five remained in detention. In August, authorities rearrested Mohamed Fali, head of the Ahmadi community in Algeria, in Ain Safra, Naama province, before trying him before the Ain Tedles Court of First Instance for collecting donations without a licence, “denigrating Islamic dogma”, and “membership of an unauthorized association”. By the end of the year, he faced six cases pending before different courts arising from the peaceful practice of his faith. IMPUNITY The authorities took no steps to open investigations and counter the impunity for grave human rights abuses and possible crimes against humanity, including unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, rape and other forms of torture committed by security forces and armed groups in the 1990s during Algeria’s internal conflict, which left an estimated 200,000 people killed or forcibly disappeared. In January, the Swiss judiciary shelved a war crimes investigation against retired Algerian Minister of Defence Khaled Nezzar for events between 1992 and 1994 in Algeria, citing inadmissibility due to the absence of armed conflict in Algeria at the time. In February, the UN Human Rights Committee found that the Algerian authorities had violated the right to remedy, the right to life, and the prohibition against torture with regard to Mohamed Belamrania, who was forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in 1995. Days after the UN finding was published, police detained his son, Rafik Belamrania, and charged him with “advocating terrorism on Facebook”. He had filed his father’s case before the UN body and documented other cases of enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial executions by Algeria’s security forces against suspected supporters of the Amnesty International Report 2017/18