Haïthem Djebbari dies under torture in police station
Three days before his death, on 20 July, members of the Algerian police investigation brigade raided the home of the Djebbari family. They accused Hichem Djebbari, a 17-year-old minor, of drug trafficking. A thorough search of the entire house was carried out. A month and a half earlier, the same members of the same brigade had thoroughly searched the same premises. But to no avail.
This time again, the police found nothing incriminating in the Djebbari home. So began the arguments with the mother and her son Hichem. Just as Haïthem, the eldest son of the family was returning home (he was shopping in the supermarket next door), he saw a policeman beating his mother. It was enough to infuriate him. He threw himself at the policeman to defend his mother.
Brigadier Souan Reda hit him three times with a Tazer, an electric pulse gun. Once on the ground, he was lynched by the policemen present at the scene. To protect themselves and justify their intervention, the policemen (from the anti-drug squad) quickly took out 40 grams of hashish to present it as the spoils of their search. They took Haïthem, handcuffed and in a terrible state, to the police station. He was beaten again and subjected to atrocious torture. They demanded that he sign the report on the discovery of 40 grams of hashish in the family home. He categorically refused.
Haïthem paid dearly for this refusal. They broke his neck. He was beaten unconscious. Fearing that the alarm would be raised in the town of Tébessa, on the orders of Zoubir Bekchit, head of security in the wilaya (prefect of police), he was evacuated to Annaba, a town 250 kilometres away. For two days, Haïthem suffered terribly from the injuries caused by the atrocious torture to which he was subjected in the police premises. But he still had time to record a video, posted on YouTube, in which he recounts in detail the horrors he endured in the Tébessa police station before surrendering on the third day of his admission to hospital. His funeral was held amid a silence imposed by the police, who oversaw the burial ceremony from beginning to end.
From Algiers, the director general of the Sûreté Nationale, Farid Zineddine Bencheikh, ordered that the case be closed and that nothing should happen. The Algerian press, so quick to react to the murder of the young French teenager Nahel, shot by a policeman, said nothing. The Algerian authorities, who had moved heaven and earth for the young Frenchman Nahel simply because his maternal grandmother was not of Algerian origin, were conspicuous by their silence.
In Tébessa, the day after the announcement of Haïthem's death, several young demonstrators took to the streets demanding justice. They were quickly repressed. But a few courageous voices, especially those of his neighbours who had witnessed the scenes of violence suffered by the Djebbari family and other relatives and friends who knew the victim, broke the silence through social networks. Finally, the prosecutor of the Tébessa court announced on 23 July that an investigation would be opened to shed light on this despicable murder of a peaceful citizen who orphaned a 2-year-old child, a young widow and an entire family of which he was the main breadwinner.