Many of those killed were not even political or security correspondents sometimes just technicians, cartoonists, secretaries. All those, in the fundamentalists' eyes, who were somehow implicated by their connection to the profession. As a result, many journalists use pseudonyms, dare not publish pictures of their faces, and often lie about their profession. One woman I met at El Khabar , the largest-selling Arabic title, even told her family she works as a hairdresser. Hundreds have fled to foreign countries, and those that remain live at secret addresses, or in guarded compounds.
Armed police patrol the perimeter of the press compound in Algiers.
It is forbidden to photograph police in any situation. Bodyguards accompany us every step of the way into this fortified old barracks, where the country's 20 or so independent newspapers are housed. There is a palpable sense of a community under siege, surrounded on all sides by high walls, watch towers and armed guards. Even these did not stop the bombers who killed four journalists with a car bomb in 1996. Their photographs adorn the walls of the newspaper offices, like those of numerous other martyrs.