Ali Mammeri is a civil servant, dissident and Hirak activist, president of the Syndicat national des fonctionnaires de la culture (SNFC) and member of the Conseil national de la Confédération syndicale des Forces Productives (COSYFOP). He was the subject of reprisals and threats of legal action after organising a unionisation campaign in the cultural sector in 2024.
On March 19, 2025, Ali Mammeri was arrested at his workplace in Oum El Bouaghi by plainclothes agents. Until March 23, 2025, neither his family nor his lawyer had received any official information about his place of detention. On March 22, 2025, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances was informed of Mammeri’s enforced disappearance since March 19, 2025.
On March 24, 2025, Mammeri contacted his mother, confirming that he was being held at the headquarters of the Security Department of the Wilaya of Constantine.
On March 26, 2025, during a visit by his counsel, Mammeri stated that he had been subjected to physical and psychological torture. He explained that he had been beaten during the first two days in police custody.
At the end of his police custody on March 27, 2025, he was brought before the prosecutor at the Oum El Bouaghi court, who decided to refer the case to the examining magistrate, requesting to open an investigation on the basis of articles 87 bis 1, 87 bis 4 and 87 bis 5 of the Penal Code, as well as articles 34 and 39 of Ordonnance n° 21-09 on the protection of administrative information and documents.
He was charged with “having intentionally, by means of electronic communications or a computer system, disseminated or published information or a document with the aim of undermining public order and public tranquility”, “advocating terrorist and subversive acts, encouraging and financing them by any means whatsoever” and “deliberately reproducing and publishing documents, printed matter or recordings praising terrorist and subversive acts”.
After being questioned by the investigating judge, the latter ordered that he be remanded in custody. He was then transferred to Oum El Bouaghi prison, where he remains in detention to this day.
Asserting that the proceedings against Mammeri violate his rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, MENA Rights Group, COSYFOP and the Justitia Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights submitted an urgent appeal to several special procedures mandate holders, including the Special Rapporteurs on freedom of opinion and expression and on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, on April 23, 2025. A request for Opinion was also submitted to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
On October 29, 2025, Mammeri was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment by the Oum El Bouaghi Criminal Court, and he subsequently appealed against this decision.
On February 1, 2026, Ali Mammeri’s appeal trial was held before the Oum El Bouaghi Criminal Court of Appeal, where he was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.