Christian Imprisoned in Algeria Launched After 3 Years
12/5/2024 Algeria (Worldwide Christian Concern) — Suleiman Bouhafs, an Algerian Christian convert, gained his freedom from jail on Sept. 1 after serving three years for blasphemy in opposition to Islam and alleged ties to terrorism. Bouhafs has denied the terrorism allegations.
A choose remanded Bouhafs to jail on Sept. 1, 2021, based mostly on a number of allegations, together with “insulting the Prophet Muhammad and … terrorism-related offenses,” in keeping with the USA Fee on Worldwide Spiritual Freedom (USCIRF). Bouhafs was formally sentenced to 3 years in jail in December 2022 for alleged ties to a terrorist group.
Earlier than his 2021 imprisonment, Bouhafs, chairman of the spiritual freedom watchdog group the St. Augustine Coordination of Christians in Algeria, suffered persecution and imprisonment. He allegedly insulted the Prophet Muhammad and blasphemed Islam. In consequence, Bouhafs was imprisoned in Algeria from September 2016 till his launch in 2018 by a presidential pardon. He subsequently fled to Tunisia and obtained refugee standing throughout the nation.
Regardless of resettling in one other nation, a number of abductors traveled to Tunisia and, on Aug. 25, 2021, forcibly eliminated Bouhafs from his house and took him again to Algeria.
Bouhafs described the kidnapping as violent and torturous.
In response to the USCIRF, Bouhafs alleged “that his abductors violently put a bag over his head, subjected him to torture, and drove him throughout the border to a police station in Algiers.”
Amnesty Worldwide spoke out in opposition to the remedy of Bouhafs in a 2023 assertion.
“Bouhafs had been granted refugee standing in Tunisia in 2020,” the group reported. “Nonetheless, this didn’t defend him from being kidnapped from his house in Tunis and tried on fees of terrorism for his supposed affiliations to a Kabylie independence group in September 2021, and since held in Kolea jail, close to to Algiers. Not solely are the fees in opposition to … Bouhafs bogus, however his whole trial is illegitimate beneath worldwide human rights legislation.”
Algeria’s persecution and focusing on of Christians was documented within the USCIRF’s October 2024 nation replace on the nation. The report states that “Algeria has closed practically all Christian evangelical church buildings within the nation, with just one remaining open as of Might 2024.”
Algeria is at present on the State Division’s Particular Watch Record of countries which have engaged in or allowed spiritual freedom violations inside their borders.
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