Rachid Nekkaz, an activist and businessman from Algeria who had been imprisoned for calling for a boycott of his country’s 2019 presidential election, was released on Wednesday, according to a rights organisation, following his announcement earlier this month that he would leave politics.
Nekkaz was released on “humanitarian grounds,” according to a Facebook post from the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees.
The Algerian newspaper Le Soir d’Algerie claims that the 51-year-old has been granted a presidential pardon. In the 2019 election, Nekkaz made an unsuccessful attempt to run for office.
Nekkaz stated that he had written to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune the month prior to “officially” inform him of his decision in a letter from prison that was posted on his Facebook page on January 2.
Nekkaz said in the letter he would dedicate himself “exclusively” to writing, his family and addressing health issues.
He had previously been jailed between December 2019 and February 2021 for “incitement to violence on social media,” where he has a large following.
The French-born Nekkaz was detained once more in May 2021 and received a five-year prison term last year.
Despite having abandoned his French citizenship, a regulation prohibiting candidates who had ever held a nationality other than Algerian had determined that he was unable to run in 2019. Instead, he proposed his cousin, who shares the same name and works as a mechanic.
After widespread protests forced his predecessor to quit, Tebboune, a former premier under longtime dictator Abdelaziz Bouteflika, won the 2019 elections.
His government has outlawed the Hirak pro-democracy movement’s protests and intensified legal action against critics, activists, journalists, and intellectuals.