justice sentences 38 people to death who participated in the lynching of a man wrongly accused of pyromania

Capital punishment for 38 people in Algeria. The Algiers Court of Appeal sentenced these defendants to death on Monday, October 23, for the murder of a man mistaken for an arsonist after helping to put out deadly fires in 2021, according to the official APS agency. But these sentences will be commuted to life imprisonment, because a moratorium on the application of the death penalty has been in force since 1993.

The lynching, which took place during the summer of 2021 in the Kabylie region, sparked a wave of indignation throughout the country. Of the 94 people tried in this case, in addition to the 38 death sentences, the Court acquitted 27 people and sentenced the others to sentences ranging from three to 20 years in prison, according to the APS. At first instance, in November 2022, 49 people were sentenced to the death penalty.

An innocent man beaten and burned alive

In August 2021, in less than a week, fires killed at least 90 people in Kabylia and ravaged thousands of hectares. After hearing that he was suspected of having started a fire, a 38-year-old painter, Djamel Bensmaïl, who had come to help the villagers put out the flames, voluntarily presented himself to the police to provide explanations for his presence on places.

Images relayed by social networks showed a crowd surrounding the police van and extracting the young man from the vehicle. He had been beaten, then burned alive, and young people had taken selfies in front of his corpse. The images of the lynching then went viral, commented on in particular via the hashtag #JusticePourDjamelBenIsmail. The perpetrators of the selfies tried to cover their tracks, but Internet users across the country compiled videos and took screenshots to ensure the crime did not go unpunished.