A Cleaner From Skikda Praises ISIS On Facebook Pages

A cleaner 29 from Skikda (eastern Algeria) is involved in 16 criminal cases between acts of theft, kidnapping, and theft followed by shattering the property of others, disobedience, assaulting policemen, false reporting, insulting a court report and disturbing public order by praising terrorist acts.

The cleaner published postings via the retrieved Facebook account with his phone number that is proved via his national identification card that carried his photo, on October 30, 2018, when he published his picture and commented with the phrase “Long live Al Qaeda soon in the mountains with our Mujahideen brothers”.

On November 1, 2018, he published three of his own pictures and commented with the phrase “Today our Mujahideen brothers got married in the mountains of Karkra, a thousand congratulations”, 3 days later, he published to the public a picture of a person sitting in front of him with a pistol-type firearm with the comment “This government is not scaring me”.

On the same day, he published a pamphlet containing the picture of the suspect where he was wearing a white shirt with the comment “Soon with our Mujahideen brothers against the tyrants”, three days later he published praising terrorism and supporting and terrorist acts because he published his own picture and commented with the phrase “Have mercy on our Sahli brother who was assassinated in the municipality of Karkra, Allah Akbar”.

He also published his picture carrying a hunting rifle and another accompanied by a small child and commenting with the phrase “a kid ISIS member with an adult ISIS member, long live Al Qaeda”, and continued to publish phrases that were praising terrorist groups until his arrest on December 18, 2018, near Skikda Court (eastern Algeria), where he was caught in possession of a smartphone equipped with a 3G internet sim card.

He was examined by the security investigation directorate of Skikda province and he recognized his facebook account which is under investigation before closure, where he confirmed that the aforementioned account is his personal account and that he is unaware of how to open it through social media, accusing his friends of opening this account without his knowledge and using it in publishing and chatting with them.

He admitted, during the trial session that took place on Tuesday evening, that the pictures in question were intended to lure the terrorist “L.A” that aimed to report him immediately to the security services since he has been dealing with them for 3 years, and he denied that he had sympathized with the terrorist groups that call for the establishment of the Islamic State opposing the ruling political systems and that he have no criminal or terrorist intentions.

However, the Public Prosecution confirmed that the charge is fulfilled by the evidence, as evidence of the accused’s recognition to the crime that is attributed to him with his allegations that he was planning to lure a terrorist and report him to the security services, and he confirmed that he is sympathetic to the terrorist groups, and the evidence for this is that when the police services came in civil clothes to arrest him, he showed resistance with one of them saying to him, “We look at you on the mountain”.

He confirmed that he was in a state of anger, and he sought a 7-year prison sentence against him and fined him by paying the sum of DZD 100.000.

For his part, his defence affirmed that its client had served the security services in order to arrest the wanted terrorist, but he lost the password seeking mitigation conditions, and after the deliberation period, the Appeal Criminal Court at Skikda Judicial Council ruled, on Wednesday, to reduce the sentence that is issued against him on last July,1, by the authority of the First Instance Court of the same jurisdiction, from 3 years in prison to 18 months in force, and 1 year and a half years suspended sentence, against the background of his pursuit of the crime of praising terrorist acts, and the misdemeanour of insulting a regular authority.