HIBAPRESS
The Algerian human rights organization "Shuaa for Human Rights" revealed that the Algerian authorities prevented journalist Ihsane El Kadi from traveling to Germany on Wednesday, October 8th, to receive the Freedom and Future of the Media Award for 2025, awarded by the Sparkasse Foundation in Leipzig. This follows the military regime's judicial apparatus continuing to arbitrarily detain his passport since April 2021.
This new prevention reveals once again, the oppressive face of the Algerian regime which continues to restrict free voices, at a time when freedom of movement is supposed to be a fundamental right guaranteed by law. After more than four years of confiscation of his passport without legal basis, journalist Ihsane El Kadi finds himself today prevented from traveling despite being released in November 2024.
Ihsane El Kadi had previously been subjected to strict judicial supervision because of a critical article of the military regime, before being arrested in December 2023 and spending 22 months behind bars, followed by a decision to close Radio M radio station and the Maghreb Emergent website, then dissolving their owning company by judicial order, in a move that reflects the regime's war on the independent press.
Due to this arbitrary decision, El Kadi will not be able to attend the award ceremony in Leipzig, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of the founding of the international award, where he will deliver a recorded speech from his home in Algiers, which will be broadcast during the ceremony with the presence of his partner in the award, the German researcher Michael Haller.
This award is one of the highest European awards in the field of media freedom, and it was awarded to El Kadi in August 2025 in honor of his courage in defending freedom of the press and its independence despite the campaigns of repression and persecution that he and his colleagues face in Algeria, where free speech faces a systematic siege by a regime that does not tolerate criticism and does not recognize the right of society to information that exposes the imbalances of the Algerian state.
