Algeria allows capital punishment under a sweeping drug ordinance

Algeria’s February 1975 drug ordinance combined prison terms for users with a broad capital-punishment clause.^[1] Illicit use carried two months to one year in prison, a 500–5,000-dinar fine, or either punishment alone.^[1] Another clause allowed death sentences when an offence under the ordinance threatened the Algerian people’s moral health.^[1]

Users could be ordered into treatment

The use offence covered substances and plants classified as narcotics.^[1] Courts investigating or trying a person for that offence could require detoxification in a specialised medical establishment.^[1] The statute thus placed treatment within a criminal process that still allowed imprisonment.^[1]

Confiscation followed the drug offences.^[1] Courts had to order confiscation of the seized drugs or plants and could confiscate equipment used to make or transport them.^[1] Places used for drug consumption or manufacture could be closed.^[1]

Supply brought longer sentences

Unlawful manufacture, preparation, import, export, storage, sale and transport of narcotics could bring ten to twenty years in prison.^[1] Attempt and participation in an agreement to commit these offences were also covered.^[1] Facilitation of another person’s drug use and certain false-prescription offences had their own penalties.^[1]

The capital clause referred to offences throughout the ordinance, including the use offence, subject to its moral-health condition.^[1][2] Its wording therefore reached beyond the particular trafficking and facilitation offences later selected by the replacement health law.^[1][2]

The ordinance reached back to earlier acts

Promulgated on 17 February and published on 21 February 1975, the ordinance said it applied to acts committed after 1 October 1974 that had not received a final judgment by publication.^[1] This made the treatment of pending cases part of the law’s reach.^[1]

For people already before the courts, the relevant boundary was therefore the status of their case as well as the date of the act.^[1] The ordinance expressly tied its retrospective application to cases without a final judgment.^[1]

A narrower clause follows in 1985

The 1985 health law repealed the ordinance.^[2] It kept the same basic prison range for illicit use but located its capital clause in specified trafficking and facilitation offences.^[2] It also provided non-prosecution for people who followed the prescribed treatment conditions.^[2]

That replacement changed the legal position of users in Algeria, while retaining severe penalties for people who supplied drugs.^[1][2]