Algeria clears way for potential pardon of jailed French journalist

ALGIERS: An Algerian court cleared the way for a presidential pardon of a detained French journalist by rejecting an appeal from prosecutors for a tougher sentence and acknowledging the defendant’s withdrawal of his own appeal, his lawyers said on Wednesday.
The lawyers for Christophe Gleizes, a French sports journalist detained in Algeria since 2024 on terror charges, announced the Court of Cassation’s decision in a statement on Facebook.
“A decisive step has just been taken regarding the legal situation of Mr.Christophe Gleizes,” lawyers Amirouche Bakouri and Emmanuel Daoud said in the joint statement.
The court is Algeria’s highest court of appeal.
The move is seen as opening the way for a pardon by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, with diplomatic relations between Paris and Algiers thawing in recent weeks following nearly two years of friction.
“The future of Mr. Christophe Gleizes now falls under the prerogatives of the president of the republic,” the lawyers said.
Gleizes, 37, was arrested in May 2024 while traveling to northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie.
He was sentenced in June last year to seven years in jail for “glorifying terrorism” after being convicted of having contact with members of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), a foreign-based group that Algiers has designated a terrorist organization.
The sentence was upheld on appeal in December, and in March Gleizes withdrew his final appeal to the court of cassation.
His lawyers said they “hoped” that a pardon by Tebboune would be granted “as quickly as possible.”
Algeria traditionally issues pardons during major religious and national holidays, including on July 5, the day marking the independence of the North African country from French colonial rule in 1962.
Thibaut Bruttin, head of Reporters Without Borders, which coordinates a support committee for Gleizes, told AFP a pardon was “the only solution” for the journalist to be released from prison now.