Ministry of Defense Withdraws Complaint Against Acquitted Aboud

The court of Hussein-Dey in Algiers has acquitted former assistant of the Chief of Military Security Department, Hichem Aboud, as the Ministry of Defense has withdrawn the complaint filed to Justice against Aboud in 2002 over his book edited in Paris in the same year, entitled “Mafia of Generals.”

As a matter of fact, the court has abolished the 1 year sentence issued in 2006 in absentia against Hichem Aboud.

Aboud, 56, returned on 1 November to Algeria putting an end to his 14 years refuge in France.

In the trial session, the judge told the audience that he had received an official letter from the Ministry of Defense, two days ago, informing him that it has decided to withdraw the complaint. 

The judge closed the session, and returned a quarter an hour later to declare Aboud not guilty, but ordered to seize and ban the distribution of the book in Algeria. 

The former military official told the judge his book has not targeted, neither the institution National Army, nor the Ministry of Defense, in which he served 17 years, but rather expressed personal opinion on some public personalities which occupied high ranking posts in the state institutions. 

He further added that he still convinced of the facts he wrote in his book. 

Aboud evokes in his banned book some military officials who used to belong to the French occupation forces, before being integrated in the national army after the independence.