Letter calls for release of journalist

Ten noted thinkers, writers and filmmakers, including director Ken Loach and Nobel literature laureate Annie Ernaux, signed an open letter published Tuesday calling on the president of Algeria to free a journalist they said was punished for refusing to bow to the government line.

In the letter to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the luminaries said that prominent journalist Ihsane El Kadi was in prison “because he refuses to submit to the pressures of those who govern the country and wanted to make him a counterfeit journalist.”