Algeria: Medical student slaughtered on campus for being “gay”
An Algerian student at the Ziania medical school was killed last week in the campus residence because he was allegedly “gay”.
The assailants smeared the wall with his blood, writing: “He is gay”, reports say.
Assil Belalta was found dead Sunday in his residence, in Ben Aknoun, a district outside the Algerian capital, Algiers.
The killers after slitting the throat of the 21-year old man, wrote on the wall with the victim’s blood: “He is gay”, Louen, an LGBT group in the North African country noted on facebook.
The group called the crime a homophobic act and said the act occurred two weeks after the statements of the president of the Algerian Magistrates Union, Mr Laidouni.
Laidouni said that human rights associations and NGOs asking for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Algeria and the fight against homophobia are “trampling on the values and foundations of the Algerian people, who do not show tolerance to homosexual people.” The magistrates will “face anyone who wants to establish laws against the specificities of the Algerian people,” Laidouni was quoted as saying.
Several hundred students paid tribute to Belalta outside the medicine school.
The assailants reportedly followed the student to his room and left with his car after slaughtering him.
The North African country has criminalized same sex act or homosexuality-related behaviors. People suspected for the offense can face up to three years in jail including financial fines.
In neighboring Tunisia, a gay man has ended up in prison for eight months for homosexual acts after he reported to police that he had been victim of theft and assault.
A court in the city of Sfax this week ordered the man, identified as “Anas”, to serve six months in prison and additional two months for lodging false allegations to police that he was victim of rape and theft, Shams, a civil society group fighting for decriminalization of homosexuality in Tunisia told media.
Anas, according to Shams, was detained on January 2 by police after he reported two men raped him and robbed him. Police used Article 230 of Tunisia’s penal code prohibiting homosexuality to subject the 26-year old man to anal examination – a procedure designed to detect evidence of sodomy.
The court found him accomplice of a consented sex. The court verdict also sentenced each of Anas’s two aggressors to jail for six months for sodomy, six weeks for theft and two weeks for violent behavior.
The North Africa country has witnessed an increase in the number of jail terms in homosexual cases: 127 in 2018, up from 79 the previous year and 56 in 2016, according to Shams.
