FIFA has issued World Cup accreditation to French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes, who has been detained in Algeria for more than a year, in a move hailed by press freedom campaigners as an important gesture of solidarity.
Reporters Without Borders, known by its French acronym RSF, said on Wednesday that world football’s governing body had granted Gleizes accreditation to cover the tournament, which runs from 11 June to 19 July in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The 37-year-old journalist was arrested in May 2024 while travelling to Kabylie, in northeastern Algeria, to report on JS Kabylie – widely known as JSK – the country’s most decorated football club. He was later sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted of “glorifying terrorism” over alleged contact with members of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie, or MAK, a foreign-based group designated a terrorist organisation by Algiers.
RSF, which coordinates a support committee for Gleizes, described FIFA’s decision as “a strong show of support” ahead of the World Cup. The organisation said the accreditation underlined that Gleizes’ place should be among fellow journalists covering football, rather than behind bars.
A symbolic gesture from football’s governing body
The accreditation authorises Gleizes to cover the entire World Cup for the French football magazine So Foot. While he remains in detention, RSF said the move carried powerful symbolic weight at a time when campaigners and his family are pressing for his release.
Thibaut Bruttin, the head of RSF, said the decision served as a reminder that “the rightful place of this sports journalist and football specialist is not in prison, but in the stadiums and behind the scenes of this major global competition”.
For Gleizes’ family, the gesture has brought a measure of comfort during a painful and protracted ordeal. His parents, Sylvie and Francis Godard, said in the RSF statement that the “never-ending situation” had left them devastated, while expressing gratitude to FIFA for its support.
They also renewed their appeal for clemency from Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, as hopes remain that a presidential pardon could provide a way out of the case.
The couple visited Gleizes in detention last week. Speaking to reporters, they said he was “being treated well”, but added that he felt increasingly cut off from the outside world.
Hopes for a possible pardon
Gleizes’ seven-year sentence was handed down in June 2025, during a period of acute diplomatic tension between France and Algeria. It was upheld on appeal in December.
In March, the journalist withdrew an appeal to Algeria’s Supreme Court, a step taken in the hope of clearing the way for a potential presidential pardon. That path appeared to open further on June 3, when his lawyers announced that Algeria’s highest court of appeal had rejected a prosecution appeal seeking a tougher sentence.
The decision removed what his legal team described as the final obstacle to a possible act of clemency.
Algeria has a tradition of issuing presidential pardons during major religious and national holidays. Campaigners are now looking towards 5 July, the date marking Algeria’s independence from French colonial rule in 1962, as a possible moment for such a decision.
(With newswires)
