According to the liberal Berber website kabyle.com, Algerian journalist Arezki Ait Larbi, correspondent for the French dailies Le Figaro and Ouest-France, was detained yesterday for 10 hours at Algiers airport, where he was to have boarded a flight for Paris.

Following interrogation, he was ordered to appear at a police station on Saturday, April 28; from there he is to be taken in custody before a prosecutor.

Boukhelifa Zahir writes on Kabyle.com that the proceedings against Ait Larbi are part of an attempt by "the mafia government in Algiers to muzzle the free and independent Algerian press. Arezki Ait Larbi remains one of the rare pens that informs the world of the situation in this region… As he works for the foreign press, over which the government has no means to exert pressure, it tries to keep its correspondents in a state of perpetual fear, a psychosis intended to bring the journalist to censor himself and fear for his liberty, if not his life."

Ait Larbi has been imprisoned several times in Algeria since he first became active in public affairs, in the 1980 Berber Spring. In 2006, his passport was confiscated for several months after the Justice Ministry brought a libel suit against him for a 1994 article documenting abuse in Lambese prison in 1980.

Source: Kabyle.com, April 26, 2007; Le Figaro (France), October 10, 2006