An Algerian court has sentenced economist and academic Djelloul Slama to four years in prison for publicly doubting the economic viability of the Gara Djebilet iron mine, one of the regime’s most heavily promoted industrial projects.
The Dar El Beïda tribunal in Algiers handed down the verdict on Thursday, 15 October 2026, along with a fine.
Slama was convicted of spreading false information that could harm public order and of obstructing investment.
He was arrested on 24 January 2026 and spent nearly nine months in pretrial detention. His offense consisted of a few minutes of television commentary.
Invited onto a private economic program in January, Slama raised standard technical questions about the quality of the ore, the high cost of extraction and transport, and whether the project could ever deliver a reasonable return. He concluded that profitability was “not assured.”
For that professional assessment, the regime has locked him away. The doubts he expressed are not new.
The Gara Djebilet deposit was discovered in 1952. It is vast, yet it remained unexploited for seven decades precisely because the ore is heavily contaminated with phosphorus, requiring expensive treatment before it can be used in steelmaking.
The site lies deep in the desert near Tindouf, hundreds of kilometers from ports and industrial centers.
Water and energy are scarce. These constraints have been known to geologists and engineers for generations.
Just days before the verdict, Algeria’s finance minister told parliament that the project has already cost 963 billion dinars, roughly 7.35 billion dollars. Authorities still promise 40 to 50 million tonnes of annual production and a return on investment by the end of the decade.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and army chief Saïd Chengriha inaugurated the mine and a related railway line with great fanfare in February 2026. State media hailed the “awakening of a giant.” Eight months later, independent images show little more than an empty crater in the desert with no working infrastructure, no machinery, no workforce.