Louh : “The Courts’ doors are open to all those who have files on corruption practices”

The Minister of Justice, Keeper of the Seals, Tayeb Louh said Thursday in Algiers that “the doors of the courts are open to all who have records on corruption in order to help justice and society in the fight against this scourge”.

Replying to an oral question from a member of the National People’s Assembly (NPA), Mr Louh underlined that “the Criminal Procedural Code is crystal-clear on the role of prosecutors in the fight against corruption and their doors are open to all those possessing files on corruption practices, adding “we are building a strong justice in accordance with the wise guidelines issued by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika”.

To a question from MP Bouchache relating to those lawyers excluded from the Oran Bar and who observed a hunger strike last year, the minister said that the legal profession is what he described as a “liberal, free and noble profession”.

The law enacted in 2013 regulating the legal profession emphasizes the “independence” of the mission management of different organizations of the bars across the country and which the National Union of Algerian bars (Unba) supervises, said Mr. Louh, believing that the latter is “an important partner in the process of reform of justice”.

In this context, Mr Tayeb Louh stated that the law “is clear and guarantees the right of appeal which may be lodged with the same Unba and with the Council of State”.

Since then, the justice minister added, the Unba Union has now resolved the problem faced by these lawyers, by summoning the Union’s president and the lawyers themselves who were finally all rehabilitated with the exception of one of them.