Sentencing a school director to 2 years over “torture,” teachers angry

Teachers and workers at the Amara Laskri middle school, in Bordj El Bahri locality, in the eastern outskirts of Algiers, have required the immediate release of the director of the school who has been sentenced to 2 years over charges of “beating and torturing” a pupil.

About 100 protesters held a sit in on Thursday near the directorate of education Algiers east, as they chanted slogans denouncing the jailing of the director by El Harrach Court, on Wednesday.

They told Echorouk reporter on the spot that “this case is fabricated, and requires urgent investigations one by the Ministry of National Education and another one by the Ministry of Health,” adding that “the director has not tortured the pupil, whom father works in Ain Taya hospital, which raises questions over the reliability of the disability certificate filed to the court.”

The demonstrators require the court to reconsider the case and listen to the eyewitnesses, who had not been summoned in the previous trial.

Some eyewitnesses said the pupil had not been subject to torture or beating as he alleged, but rather was slapped on the face because he did not behave respectfully with the director. They added that the boy had broken his arm outside the school, not inside. 

The angry teachers have threatened to increase their protest move, as all the 119 middle schools existing in Algiers are to join it, until competent authorities open an independent investigation on this case.