On Thursday, the cartoonist Djamel Ghanem was assaulted by four unknown persons, which resulted in wounds on different parts of his body with a broken right leg. This happened at about 16:30 on Thursday evening, February 20, 2014, when he was on his way to his house back from his place of work as a waiter in a coffee shop in Oran city, where a muscled person stopped him at a corner asking to talk to him, then the cartoonist was surprised to see three other persons who attacked him, where they assaulted him through hits and kicks on different parts of his body after bringing him down, which resulted in breaking his right leg, cuts and bruises on different parts of his body, then they fled away. Later, the cartoonist, who was taken to the emergency hospital for treatment, has filed a complaint before the Algerian Security Department.
The cartoonist Djamel Ghanem is under prosecution in a court in Oran city, in the case of insulting the President and dishonesty, filed by the newspaper in which he was working, because of an unpublished cartoon found in his archive, after he filed a complaint before the Labor Inspectorate to claim his entitlements of work in the newspaper, as the Algerian prosecutor has claimed a period of 18 months in prison for him, in the hearing held in this midmonth.
The cartoonist said to Elbilad newspaper that the attackers came to the coffee shop located downtown, where he was working and they were staring at him well, then they attacked him, trying to cover their faces by wearing masks.