Information coming from one state news agency in Algeria indicates that a court there has sentenced 49 people to death for the mob killing of Ben Ismail, a painter who was mistaken for starting devastating wildfires 2021.
The wildfires in the mountainous Berber region killed about 90 people, including soldiers who were trying to contain the fires.
The high-security trial, according to Associated Press, “involved more than 100 suspects, many of whom were found guilty of some role in his death.”
Hakim Saheb, member of a collective of volunteer defence lawyers at the trial said: “Those given the death penalty on Thursday are likely to face life in prison instead, because Algeria has had a moratorium on executions for decades…Thirty-eight others were given sentences of between two and 12 years in prison.”
According to the Algerian police, Ismail was dragged out of the station where he was being protected before being killed. Among those on trial, Associated Press says, were three women and a man who knifed the victim’s inanimate body before he was burned.
Disturbing photos of Ismail’s body that did rounds on the internet, police said, helped to identify the suspects.
Associated Press further reports that defence lawyers believe the confessions “were coerced under torture and called the trial a political masquerade aimed at stigmatizing the people of Kabyle”
Among those who were convicted in absentia include five people “belonging to or supporting a banned Kabyle separatist movement called MAK.”
