El Kadi has to go to prison for three years to serve his sentence. His media company was shut down and fined a lot.

Ihsane El Kadi, a well-known Algerian journalist, has been sentenced to three years in prison by a court in Algiers. The Sidi M'Hamed court said that El Kadi had "foreign financing of his business," according to AFP.

The court ruled on Sunday that El Kadi, who owns one of the few independent media groups in the country and is critical of the government, must serve three of the five years in jail.

The court also said that the company that runs Maghreb Emergent and Radio M, which is run by El Kadi, should be dissolved. The court gave the company and El Kadi several fines that added up to 11.7 million Algerian dinars ($86,200).

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The journalist was arrested for the first time on December 24, and he has been in jail ever since. This is because of a state security law that says it is illegal to receive money that threatens state security or "national unity," according to the news site he runs, Maghreb Emergent.

After the journalist was arrested, Interface Media's office was locked up and all of its papers were taken.

Abdelghani Badi, one of El Kadi's lawyers who didn't show up to the hearing, told AFP, "We're going to appeal this decision within the time limit."

El Kadi's defense team said that the foreign funding charges were not true. They pointed out that the only foreign transfer to El Kadi's company came from his daughter, who lives in the UK. She is a partner in the company and sent $31,000 to it.

Human rights groups like Amnesty International and groups that fight for journalists' rights like Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists have all said that El Kadi's arrest was wrong (CPJ).

Thousands of people signed a petition to get him out of jail.

Sherif Mansour, who is in charge of CPJ's Middle East and North Africa Program, said in December that El Kadi's arrest was an attack on Algeria's independent media and that the government should "stop harassing the press."

"By arresting journalist Ihsane El Kadi and shutting down Radio M and Maghreb Emergent, Algerian authorities are going after some of the last independent voices in the country," Mansour said.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES