HIBAPRESS.
The Algiers Court of Appeal issued a new ruling on Tuesday against former Minister of Justice Tayeb Louh, reducing his sentence to three years in prison, including two years of effective imprisonment and one year of probation, on charges of false property declarations and illicit enrichment, in one of the most prominent cases involving senior officials during the era of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Suspicious Circumstances Surrounding Minister Tayeb Louh
Tayeb Louh is known to have been one of the most prominent pillars of the justice sector during Bouteflika's rule. He was provisionally imprisoned since the summer of 2021 following investigations conducted by the Anti-Corruption Office, which revealed suspicions related to abuse of office, incitement to forgery, and obstruction of justice.
The court had previously sentenced him to four years in prison in a separate case and was convicted in another case to two years of effective imprisonment. During the recent trial sessions, his defense filed a challenge to the jurisdiction of the economic criminal pole and raised the issue of statute of limitations, as the alleged events date back to 2017, while the follow-up began in 2021.
Tayeb Louh responded to all the charges against him, clarifying the source of his properties, including a property in the Al-Madhabih neighborhood in Staoueli, which he purchased in 2018 in installments, i.e., after the property declaration, and a villa in Dely Ibrahim, partially financed by the sale of a previous property and family savings.
Despite the new ruling, the former minister remains under judicial prosecution in other cases, most notably the case of obstructing justice, in which he, the former inspector general, and businessman Tariq Kouninef were involved, and sentences of two years of effective imprisonment were issued against them. The judiciary also rejected the defense's request to merge the sentences in 2023, which means that Tayeb Louh faces separate sentences in multiple cases.
Internal Account Settlements in Algeria
Tayeb Louh is a pivotal figure in the pre-popular movement phase, not only because of his ministerial position, but also because he held the justice portfolio between 2013 and 2019, a period during which the judiciary witnessed widespread debate about its independence and the limits of its submission to the executive authority.
His case falls within a comprehensive judicial campaign launched by the authorities since 2019 against senior officials and businessmen close to the former regime, such as Ahmed Ouyahia, Abdelmalek Sellal, and Ali Haddad, but it is distinctive because it involves the minister who was responsible for implementing the law itself.
This file raises an ongoing debate in political and human rights circles about the extent of the independence of the Algerian judiciary, and the extent to which the current regime is able to overcome the practices of the past. While the trials are officially presented as part of the fight against corruption and the restoration of the rule of law, observers and opponents consider them political selectivity to rearrange power and settle internal accounts.
Some believe that the continuation of these cases intermittently reflects hidden conflicts within the institutions of government, more than it reflects a real path to accountability, especially since Tayeb Louh is considered a black box that carries secrets about the management of the justice sector during the Bouteflika era and the network of interests that controlled judicial and political decisions.
With each new development in his file, the debate is renewed about the path of transitional justice in Algeria, and whether the country has actually entered a new phase of transparency and accountability, or whether it is still managing the files with the same old mechanisms that characterized the pre-popular movement phase.
