2008 in Algeria - December

December

• December 3: A poll published by the independent daily, Liberté, revealed that 49.5% of Algerian men between the ages of 15 and 34 desire to emigrate to England or Europe. More than 80% of those polled cited fleeing Algeria and building a future as motivation for leaving. The poll reported that four out of five Algerians knew someone who had left illegally without the required passports and visas.

• December 8: Algeria pardoned a 51-year-old Dutch drug smuggler. The pardon was issued to coincide with a Muslim holiday for the prophet Abraham. The smuggler, Berry Dovens, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993 after he was apprehended at the Moroccan border with 2,400 kilos of hashish in his camper van.

• December 23: Algeria maintains the world's largest carbon capture and storage operation in Salah, Algeria, approximately seven hundred miles south of Algiers. About 800,000 tons of carbon dioxide is stored there, 1.2 miles (1.9 km) below land. Currently the site is being operated by British Petroleum, Statoil, and Sonatrach. The operation made headlines during the December 2008 meeting of OPEC in Algiers.

• December 28: Algeria plans to invest $1.5 billion to modernize and expand its rail network. The project is part of an effort to expand railway connectivity to the high plateau region and refurbish railroads in the rest of the country.

• December 29: Omar Belhouchet, an Algerian editor of the French language daily, El Watan, was jailed for three months along with one of his journalists, Salima Tlemcani. They were found guilty in a libel suit dating back to 2004. They wrote an article claiming that a faith healer was an imposter.
  In 2004 Tlemcani won a Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF).