Mohammed Benchicou

Mohammed Boualem Benchicou was born on 1 July 1952 in Miliana, in Aïn Defla Province, Algeria. He was the eldest of seven children. He later married and had three children, two daughters and a son.

He entered journalism through the Algerian press of the late 1970s and 1980s, working at El Moudjahid and then at Alger Républicain as the country moved toward a more open media field after 1988.

In 1989 Benchicou helped found the Mouvement des journalistes algériens (MJA). He then led the relaunch of Alger Républicain, which had been banned from publication since 1965. In 1991 he left that paper with Saïd Mekbel, Fodil Mezali and others to found Le Matin, which became one of Algeria's main French-language opposition dailies.

In February 2004 he published Bouteflika, une imposture algérienne, a critical biography of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in Algeria and France. In June 2004 he was sentenced to two years in prison for an alleged foreign-exchange offence after an August 2003 airport search. PEN and other press-freedom groups called the prosecution political. The state printer SIMPRAL stopped printing Le Matin in 2004 citing unpaid debts, and the paper was closed during his imprisonment. He left El Harrach prison on 14 June 2006.

After his release he published Les geôles d'Alger (2007), poetry and diaries, and further political books including Le mensonge de Dieu (2011) and later titles on Bouteflika and Algerian history. In March 2006, while still jailed, he received the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award.

Benchicou was the eldest of seven siblings. He was married and the father of three children, two daughters and a son. Friends and colleagues often described his work and family life as closely bound to the fate of Le Matin and to the wider struggle for press freedom in Algeria.

Mohammed Benchicou died on 24 September 2026 at the age of 74. The Algerian news site TSA reported the death the same day, calling him an emblematic figure of the independent Algerian press and recalling his role as founder of Le Matin and author of many books. No cause of death was made public in the first reports.

Benchicou is remembered as a founder of Le Matin and as a journalist who paid personally for criticising Algeria's rulers. His 2004 book on Bouteflika, his two years in El Harrach prison, and the PEN Freedom to Write Award made him an international symbol of press freedom in North Africa.

For a generation of Algerian reporters he stood for an opposition daily that refused to soften its tone, and for a body of books that kept arguing with power long after Le Matin had been forced to close.