Suleiman Bouhafs, an Algerian Christian convert, gained his freedom from prison on Sept. 1 after serving three years for blasphemy against Islam and alleged ties to terrorism. Bouhafs has denied the terrorism allegations.
A judge remanded Bouhafs to prison on Sept. 1, 2021, based on several allegations, including “insulting the Prophet Muhammad and … terrorism-related offenses,” according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Bouhafs was officially sentenced to three years in prison in December 2022 for alleged ties to a terrorist organization.
Before his 2021 imprisonment, Bouhafs, chairman of the religious freedom watchdog group the St. Augustine Coordination of Christians in Algeria, suffered persecution and imprisonment. He allegedly insulted the Prophet Muhammad and blasphemed Islam. As a result, Bouhafs was imprisoned in Algeria from September 2016 until his release in 2018 through a presidential pardon. He subsequently fled to Tunisia and obtained refugee status within the country.
Despite resettling in another nation, several abductors traveled to Tunisia and, on Aug. 25, 2021, forcibly removed Bouhafs from his home and took him back to Algeria.
Bouhafs described the abduction as violent and torturous.
According to the USCIRF, Bouhafs alleged “that his abductors violently put a bag over his head, subjected him to torture, and drove him across the border to a police station in Algiers.”
Amnesty International spoke out against the treatment of Bouhafs in a 2023 statement.
“Bouhafs had been granted refugee status in Tunisia in 2020,” the organization reported. “However, this did not protect him from being kidnapped from his home in Tunis and tried on charges of terrorism for his supposed affiliations to a Kabylie independence organization in September 2021, and since held in Kolea prison, near to Algiers. Not only are the charges against … Bouhafs bogus, but his entire trial is illegal under international human rights law.”
Algeria’s persecution and targeting of Christians was documented in the USCIRF’s October 2024 country update on the nation. The report states that “Algeria has closed nearly all Christian evangelical churches in the country, with only one remaining open as of May 2024.”
Algeria is currently on the State Department’s Special Watch List of nations that have engaged in or allowed religious freedom violations within their borders.
