“After 1,200 days of imprisonment, house arrest and ban on leaving the territory, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune finally ordered the lifting of the ban on leaving the national territory imposed on Rachid Nekkaz since 2019”, said writes the opponent in a letter received on Saturday March 25 by l’AFP.
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Algeria: Rachid Nekkaz, the itchy hair of the Republic
Rachid Nekkaz thanked the president Tebboune for responding to a message he sent last week “asking him to intervene personally, so that he can leave the country legally and undergo surgery as soon as possible”.
Released for “humanitarian reasons”
In his letter, the opponent specified that he was notably suffering from a serious eye disease and prostate cancer. He was released on January 18 for “humanitarian reasons” after being sentenced to five years in prison in July 2022 for calling for a boycott of the 2019 presidential election.
His release came two weeks after the announcement of his abandonment of political life in a letter written from his cells and handed over to his relatives.
“Resigned to stopping politics”
In this letter published on January 2 on Facebook, he wrote that he had “resigned himself by force of circumstance to stopping politics in Algeria”, adding that he had also written to President Tebboune on December 10 to inform him “officially” of his decision. . He also indicated that he wanted “from now on to devote himself exclusively to solving his health problems, to writing and to his family (…) selfishly abandoned in the United States for 10 years”.
Incarcerated since May 2021, Rachid Nekkaz had already been imprisoned from December 2019 to February 2021 for, in particular, “incitement to violence through networks social”.
(With AFP)
