Algerian police arrested journalist and rights activist Arezki Ait Larbi on a defamation charge for an article written back in 1994, the journalist told AFP.
Police detained him after he went to the police to ask about setting up a new newspaper, Ait Larbi told AFP by phone.
Police told him about the outstanding warrant concerning the article, in which had written about the abuse of detainees in a prisoner, where he himself had been jailed in 1986.
But Ait Larbi said he had been acquitted in 2007 when the plaintiff failed to turn up at the trial.
Police in Algiers declined to comment on Larbi's arrest.
Ait Larbi is a co-founder of the Algerian League of Human Rights and the Collectif SOS Libertes, which defended Christians taken to court last summer for having failed to respect the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
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