Summary

To accurately analyze the legal happenings with the prisoners of conscience, we at Advance collected accusations for  269 individuals. These were directly obtained from primary sources and verified by attorneys. These individuals consisted of individuals with that’s accusations and cases that were previously made public in order to mitigate risk and apply our no-harm policy. The results were quite evident and in line with civil Society’s demands.

A distribution pie of the accusation boldly demonstrates the overuse of article 87 bis where over 50 percent of our sample had charges relating to terrorism. Second, on the distribution pie is the “ unknown status” 74 individuals were pending charges or data was not reachable. These were followed by charges of limiting expression, assembly, and association.

A basic accusation breakdown gives us a view of accusation distribution relating to the freedom they infringe on.  It is also important to keep in mind, these charges can and often are compounded on each other. 

246, 303, or  315?

Different estimates on the prisoner of detention count have been reported, some factors being:

Lack of official record keeping, collateral effects, and lawyer reporting.

Accurate information is only given by lawyers, and with many victims fearing governmental retaliation, information is not reported and unknown to the public. 

HRDs on the ground explain that the numbers are indeed greater, but a lack of information flow and transparency makes an accurate count near impossible.

Furthermore, is that allegations are subject to change and often do, making a count more difficult.

The Grander issue at hand,

Is that these defective laws are all-encompassing and so they touch more than prisoners of conscience.

The high level of corruption at local levels, which even the Algerian president spoke about, can lead anyone with local influence to place such charges as means of advantage or personal vendetta. This essentially is not political but is the grander danger of such defective legislation. With a lack of transparency and lack of record keeping, the negative reach of such all-encompassing legislation is camouflaged and difficult to account for. Further substantiating the need to repeal such defective legislation, so that all cases with such articles are addressed. Many individuals of authority in Algeria proscribe to the idea or have expressed that there are no prisoners of conscience in the country.  Based on our analysis of the law, the question of status is a trivial matter, as the laws are defective by nature and inherently infringe on fundamental human rights. And so Sustainable smart recommendations need to focus on the grander legal dilemma in order to avoid revolving door occurrences with detention.