Algeria jails journalist over ‘false news’

ALGIERS: An Algerian court has jailed a journalist convicted of “spreading false news” in an article about dates allegedly tainted with banned pesticides, his newspaper said on Wednesday.

Belkacem Houam was handed a year-long prison sentence, most of it suspended, but he will spend two months behind bars, said his paper, Echorouk. Houam, whose arrest in September provoked widespread indignation online, will also have to pay a fine of 100,000 dinars (about $710), Echorouk added.

He was detained after reporting there had been an “immediate halt in date exports from Algeria”, saying importers had returned 3,000 tons of Deglet Nour dates that were “unfit for consumption”. The Algerian trade and agriculture ministry has denied the affair.