According to the state news agency, an Algerian court sentenced 49 people to death after they were found guilty of lynching a man wrongfully suspected of starting forest fires last year.
Because there is a moratorium on executions, the sentences are likely to be reduced to life in prison.
Algeria experienced the worst fires in its history in 2021, with multiple blazes killing 90 people.
Djamel Ben Ismail, the lynching victim, had gone to help fight the fires.
After the fires broke out in August last year, the 38-year-old tweeted saying he would travel over 320km (200 miles) from his home to “give a hand to our friends” fighting the blazes in the Kabylie region, east of the capital Algiers, which was the worst-hit area.
Soon after he arrived, locals falsely accused him of starting fires himself.
The videos caused national outrage.
Mr Ben Ismail’s brother urged social media users to delete the footage of the attack. His mother, he said, still did not know how her son had died.
His father, Noureddine Ben Ismail, said he was “devastated”. “My son left to help his brothers from Kabylie, a region he loves. They burned him alive,” he said.
The AFP news agency reports that the father’s calls for calm and “brotherhood” were praised by Algerians.
The fires took place amid dry conditions and very high temperatures, but authorities also blamed “criminals” for the blazes.