Rachid Mesli () is an

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

n human rights lawyer and activist, living in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

and acting as the Director of the Legal Department of Alkarama (Human rights organisation based in Geneva). In 1991, he became part of the defense lawyer team defending the case of the arrested leaders of the

Islamic Salvation Front The Islamic Salvation Front (; , FIS) was an Islamist political party in Algeria. The party had two major leaders representing its two bases of its support; Abbassi Madani appealed to pious small businessmen, and Ali Belhadj appealed to the a ...

Abbassi Madani Abbassi Madani (; 28 February 1931 – 24 April 2019) was an Algerian politician who was the President of the Islamic Salvation Front. As its leader, he became the voice of a large part of the dispossessed Algerian youth. Career Madani was born ...

and

Ali Belhadj Ali Benhadj (also Belhadj; ; born 16 December 1956) is an Algerian Islamist activist and preacher and cofounder of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) political party, the winner of the June 1990 local elections and the 1991 Algerian legislative el ...

. On 31 July 1996, he was abducted at gunpoint from his car by four assailants who turned out to be members of the security forces. He was then detained secretly for over a week, repeatedly beaten and threatened with death, and eventually charged with belonging to a terrorist group. In July 1997, he was acquitted of this charge and instead convicted of having "encouraged terrorism", a charge that had not been brought against him in the trial and against which he had no opportunity to defend himself.

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

said the trial had "clearly violated international standards for fair trial". In December 1998, his conviction was quashed by the Supreme Court; he was kept in prison while awaiting retrial, contrary to Algerian law. In June 1999, he was found guilty of belonging to a terrorist group and sentenced to three years' imprisonment. He was released in July 1999, one and a half weeks before his sentence was to end, as part of a presidential pardon. In 2000, fearing for his and his family's safety, he left the country to live in

. Since moving to

, he has continued his human rights activism. In 2001, he co-founded Justitia Universalis, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to fighting impunity. In the same year, he submitted the cases of

and

, the detained leaders of the banned

, to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Geneva, which ruled that both were being detained arbitrarily, since their 1992 trial had failed to comply with international standards. This verdict greatly displeased the Algerian government, which subsequently charged Rachid Mesli with belonging to an "armed terrorist group" operating abroad, issuing an unenforceable arrest warrant. According to

, several Algerians ( Tahar Facouli, Brahim Ladada, and Abdelkrim Khider) have been arrested and tortured mainly for being in contact with him. Appeal Case - Algeria: Torture of Brahim Ladada and Abdelkrim Khider
Amnesty International 14 November 2002 In 2007, he co-founded Rachad, an organisation dedicated to overthrowing the Algerian government through mass nonviolent resistance.

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Rachid Mesli
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mesli, Rachid Algerian human rights activists Algerian dissidents Living people Human rights lawyers 20th-century Algerian lawyers Lawyers from Geneva Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century Algerian lawyers