The trial against Said Bouteflika, the younger brother of former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and other former officials implicated in corruption cases opened in Algiers on Sunday, the agency said. APS.
Saïd Bouteflika, former adviser to the presidency, Tayeb Louh, former Minister of Justice, and Ali Haddad, former leader of Algerian employers, are tried from Sunday with other co-defendants, by the court of Dar El Beïda , in the eastern suburbs of Algiers.
Saïd Bouteflika and the other defendants are being prosecuted in particular for “inciting falsification of official documents”, “abuse of office”, “obstructing justice”, “incitement to partiality of the judiciary” and “contempt of court”.
Bribery
Originally scheduled for September 27, the trial was postponed at the request of defense lawyers. Saïd Bouteflika, 63, was arrested in May 2019 along with three co-accused and sentenced in September of the same year to 15 years' imprisonment in a flash trial before a military court for "conspiracy against authority of the State and of the army ”.
On January 2, 2021, a military appeal court acquitted him.
But, being under a warrant of committal for "influence peddling", he had been transferred from a military prison to a civilian prison.
Since the forced resignation of Abdelaziz Bouteflika at the beginning of April 2019 under the pressure of the demonstrations of the Hirak and the army, the Algerian justice has placed in preventive detention or sentenced several former high political leaders as well as powerful businessmen, in particular for facts of corruption.