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Hunger strike claims life of jailed Algerian journalist

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Hunger strike claims life of jailed Algerian journalist

42-year-old British-Algerian journalist, Mohamed Tamalt who has been in coma for more than three months after he embarked on a hunger strike in protest against his arrest and two-year jail term for insulting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is dead.

According to his lawyer, the convicted journalist who ran a blog and was a freelance journalist based in London before his arrest died of a lung infection while in a coma due to the hunger strike he embarked upon.

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“I can confirm the death of the journalist Mohamed Tamalt in Bab el-Oued hospital after a hunger strike of more than three months and a three-month coma,” Amine Sidhoum, Tamalt’s lawyer, wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

Tamalt who was arrested near his parents’ house in Algiers on June 27 and began his hunger strike the same day, was convicted in an Algerian court of “defaming a public authority” and “offending” Algeria’s President Bouteflika in a poem he posted on Facebook.

 

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