Television showed on May 5 the arrival of three personalities at the military tribunal of Blida: the brother of the fallen president, Saïd Bouteflika; the former coordinator of security services, Athmane Tartag; the boss for a quarter of a century of the Algerian secret services (DRS), Mohamed Mediène, called Toufik.
The chief of staff of the PNA and vice-minister of national defence, Ahmed Gaïd Salah, went all the way in his public threats against those whom he presented, a few days ago, as being a gang, accusing it of having plotted against the State. (El Watan, May 6)
The military justice also placed on May 9 Hanoune, the general secretary of the Workers’ Party (PT), in pre-trial detention, after having indicted her of “plots against the army and the State”.
Summoned as a witness by the military tribunal of Blida, Louisa Hanoune, general secretary of the Workers’ Party, has been placed in detention after more than five hours of hearing by the judge in charge of the file of Saïd Bouteflika and the two generals Toufik and Tartag. (El Watan, May 10)
On May 21, the students who demonstrated against the maintained regime were repressed.
The bourgeois State attempts to intimidate. Workers’ organisations of all countries must protest against the repression of demonstrators, the arrest and imprisoning of any official of a trade union or of a party of workers’ origin, regardless of its policy.
In the case of the PT, that the press presents inappropriately as “Trotskyist”, this policy is indefensible. The PT had constituted a coalition with the former single party (FLN) and the Islamists (FIS), then, after the civil war, had drawn nearer to the Salah-Bouteflika regime, which allowed its international current (the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples, led then by Daniel Gluckstein) to hold conferences in Algeria.
But it belongs to the working class to judge its organisations and its leaders, not to the repressive machinery of the bourgeois State.
International solidarity with the Algerian workers and youth! Immediate liberation of Hanoune! Lift all legal proceedings against student demonstrators and leaders of the PT! Respect the right to demonstrate, to express oneself, to organise!