Omar Belhouchet
Algerian journalist
Omar Belhouchet (Arabic: عمر بلهوشات; born 9 February 1954 in Sétif) is an Algerian journalist who is renowned for his investigative reporting and supporting freedom of the press; his work and persistence have received international recognition. During the civil war of the 1990s, which put enormous pressure on the free press from both sides, Belhouchet was prosecuted numerous times by his government and survived two assassination attempts.
Belhouchet started his journalism career at Algérie Presse Service followed by reporting for El Moudjahid (English: "The Holy Warrior"), the FLN government-owned newspaper. After the government allowed independent newspapers, in 1990 Belhouchet founded the daily newspaper El Watan (English: "The Nation"), together with nineteen colleagues from El Moudjahid.
Journalism
Belhouchet received a degree in economics from the University of Algiers, and first went to work for Algérie Presse Service. He moved as a journalist to El Moudjahid, the government-established newspaper of the FLN. In 1990, he left the paper to found the independent El Watan.
In a 1999 interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Belhouchet estimated that between 1993 and 1997, he faced thirty legal actions initiated by Algerian officials, sometimes requiring him to appear in court two or three times a week. He reported being threatened by Islamic militants more than 100 times. According to the New York Times, he has "narrowly escaped" two assassination attempts. One of these attempts occurred in 1993, when an assailant fired a machine gun at his car while he was driving his children to school; Belhouchet escaped by dropping low in the seat and gunning the accelerator.
“Omar Belhouchet” enters the record as algerian journalist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Omar, Belhouchet and Algerian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2756707. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1990, 1999 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Omar Belhouchet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.