Algeria’s prosecutor’s office should drop its criminal blasphemy investigation of a writer over his 2016 novel, Human Rights Watch said today. The Algerian authorities should uphold freedom of expression and take immediate steps to abolish the blasphemy law.

The judicial police in Tipaza, a city 70 kilometers from Algiers, interrogated Anouar Rahmani, a 25-year-old law student and novelist, on February 28, 2017. They told him that the public prosecutor had opened an investigation into “The City of White Shadows,” a novel he published online in August 2016. They filed a report accusing him of insulting Islam in his novel. Rahmani is free pending a decision by the prosecutor on whether to charge him.

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Rahmani told Human Rights Watch that he received a police summons on February 27, 2017 at his house. When he went to the Tipaza police station the following morning, seven policemen interrogated him about his novel. In one chapter, a child converses with a homeless man who calls himself “God” and claims that he has created the sky out of chewing gum. The novel also depicts a gay romance between a freedom fighter and a French settler during the Algerian war for independence.

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Laws that criminalize the “defamation” of religion or religious groups are not compatible with norms of freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in its general comment on Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Algeria has ratified, stated that it is not permissible for “prohibitions of displays of lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws … to be used to prevent or punish criticism of religious leaders or commentary on religious doctrine and tenets of faith.”