The death of Mohamed Benchicou, the Algerian journalist, editor and writer associated with the independent daily Le Matin, has prompted renewed discussion of his writing on Kabylie and his long conflict with Algeria’s political establishment.
SIWEL reported that Benchicou died on September 24, 2026, at the age of 74. In a tribute, Kabyle leader Ferhat Mehenni highlighted Benchicou’s record as a critical journalist and returned to a 2001 text in which Benchicou analyzed the political rupture opened by the Black Spring in Kabylie.
Benchicou’s name carries weight in Algerian press history. He helped found Le Matin in the early 1990s, and the paper became known for its sharp criticism of the authorities. He was later imprisoned for two years during the presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika after a case officially tied to currency regulations, though press-freedom observers and supporters viewed his imprisonment in the wider context of pressure on critical media.
The Kabylie dimension of the tributes focuses on Benchicou’s early recognition that the region’s relationship with the Algerian state had changed profoundly after 2001. SIWEL’s account stresses that Mehenni read those older writings as evidence that Benchicou had seen the depth of Kabylie’s political estrangement long before the current institutional language of autonomy, self-determination or independence became more prominent.
That interpretation should be read as part of the tribute and the Kabyle movement’s own political framing, not as a measurement of all Kabyle opinion. Still, the renewed attention to Benchicou’s writing shows how journalism from moments of crisis can continue to shape political memory decades later.
For Amazigh and Kabyle readers, Benchicou’s passing is therefore being marked on two levels: as the loss of an Algerian press figure who challenged power, and as the return of a text that captured, early on, the seriousness of the Kabyle question after the Black Spring.