Yacine Mekireche is a human rights defender and political activist affiliated with the Democratic and Social Movement (MDS) party since 2018. Before the party was suspended in February 2023, he organized press conferences and meetings at the MDS headquarters to support prisoners of conscience and their families. He regularly attends trials of prisoners of conscience as well as sit-ins of solidarity.

Between 2020 and 2023, Mekireche was arrested three times. On November 15, 2022, he sentenced by the Bouira court to six months in prison and a fine of 50,000 dinars.

He was arrested again on the morning of August 6, 2024, at his family home before being taken to the judicial police department of the 5th Urban Security Center in Bab El Oued. His home was also searched, and security officers confiscated his mobile phone, his brother’s personal computer, and a sum of 6,500 Algerian dinars.

Since June 6, 2024, the judicial police department of the 5th Urban Security Center in Bab El Oued had been monitoring all of Mekireche’s online activities and movements following multiple reports by the Algiers Wilaya security services.

After his arrest, the judicial police immediately searched his phone, inspecting his conversations on various messaging apps and his social media accounts. Police officers questioned him about statements he had made concerning human rights violations committed during the Black Spring of 2001, as well as posts in which he expressed his political views on the country’s situation, judicial independence, corruption, the transitional period, and political solutions in Algeria, as well as his publications about prisoners of conscience.

On August 8, 2024, Mekireche was brought before the prosecutor of the Bab El Oued court, who decided to transfer his case to the investigating judge and requested the opening of a case for the offenses of “incitement to unarmed gathering” and “dissemination of hate speech through information and communication technologies”.

Following the interrogation, the investigating judge placed Mekireche under a detention order and transferred him to El Harrach detention center. On August 21, 2024, the indictment chamber of the Algiers court confirmed the investigating judge’s order and his pretrial detention in connection with the aforementioned charges.

On October 7, 2024, the investigating judge closed Mekireche’s case and transferred it to the criminal court, confirming the charges against him. His trial, initially scheduled for October 27, was postponed to allow the Agent Judiciaire du Trésor (AJT) to be summoned.

On October 15, 2024, MENA Rights Group sent an urgent appeal to several UN special procedures mandate holders regarding Mekireche’s situation. We argued that he was being prosecuted and deprived of liberty for having peacefully exercised his rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, enshrined in articles 19 and 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Algeria.

On November 17, 2024, Mekireche was sentenced to six months in prison. He was released on February 8, 2025, after serving his sentence.