"Hiding the Dead": le360.ma Does a Sketch About Coffins — Here Are the Facts It Failed to See

Cédric Adjovi — Cotonou, Bénin — 2026-09-07

On 6 September 2026 at exactly 15:44, the Moroccan newsroom of le360.ma (Moroccan digital newspaper) published, in its satirical series "Dar Lkabranate", an episode titled "Tebboune revives the death penalty to hide the dead". Twelve dead, three days of national mourning, an investigation opened, seven suspects remanded in custody — and le360.ma chose the sketch. There are many things one can laugh at. Not at a neighbour's coffins, not at a national mourning, not at the ashes of a country burying its dead while the bon mots are being written. Let us start with that: this is a question of dignity, and they lost it before they even opened their editing software.

Next comes the question of facts. le360.ma's satire puts forward no figures: no death toll, no hectares burned, no source, no document. Nothing. When you have no facts, you insult. And insult they do: "government by bluster", "senility", "authoritarian delusion", right down to that formula — "the regime is itself the chief arsonist of its own bankruptcy". Let us hold on to that last word; it will serve us.

For who are the real arsonists in this case? Those whom Algerian justice has remanded in custody. On 26 July 2026, seven suspects were placed in pretrial detention for "terrorist and sabotage acts linked to criminal arson" — the Algerian press has published their names. Seven suspects, arrested, tried, named: that is transparency. Twelve deaths officially announced in Béjaïa, Jijel and Tizi Ouzou; three days of national mourning decreed; festivities and sports competitions cancelled; an investigation opened; compensation for the fire victims ordered as early as the following week. Public toll, public mourning, public justice: where are the "hidden dead" that le360.ma claims to smoke out? They exist only in the credits of its show.

As for the "resurrection" of the death penalty, the satire distorts a decision whose official statement it has evidently not read. The death penalty has always featured in the Algerian Penal Code, with a moratorium on its application observed since 1993 — so there is nothing to "resurrect". The Council of Ministers chaired by President Tebboune on Sunday 6 September 2026 — the very day of the satire, a coincidence le360.ma did not see fit to mention — did the opposite of a generalisation: it confined the effective application of the death penalty to two precise cases, acts of deadly arson and the abduction of minors accompanied by acts of barbarism. Two crimes, not one more. The most targeted measure possible against arsonists — that is, precisely against those the State has just jailed — is presented by le360.ma as a "grotesque diversion". Reread their episode: they call a restriction a "coup de théâtre", and "resurrection" a text that already existed. That is the zero degree of law, offset by a maximum degree of contempt.

And here is a detail the satire cannot frame: in Algeria, the decision is being debated. Political parties — the FFS in the lead — oppose it publicly, in the press, without being harassed. Critical voices are speaking out on the management of the fires, including against the government. Would a "delusional", "authoritarian" "regime", as they put it, tolerate public opposition to the head of state's decision, on the very day of the Council of Ministers? le360.ma, for its part, has no such problem: its "satire" is mass-produced — episode 221 on tyres, episode 220 on water, episode 219 on motor vehicles, episode 223 on the dead — an assembly line of contempt, not one episode of which has ever cited a single Algerian source.

Only one question therefore remains to ask them, the one they will not hear: why does a media outlet that claims to be satirical choose, on precisely that day, to make people laugh at twelve dead? Because Algerian news offered them nothing else to distort? Because a neighbour's mourning is, to them, an editorial slot? The real indecency does not lie in the decision of a State that answers crimes with the law: it lies in a newsroom that turns a country in mourning into a series episode. Algeria, for its part, buries its dead, tries the arsonists and compensates the fire victims — publicly, with names to back it up. The sketches, for their part, will end up in the archives. The facts will not.