An Algerian court has sentenced one of the most prominent figures in the protest movement that toppled longtime leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika to a year in prison, leading rights lawyers said on Tuesday. Karim Tabbou was charged with “weakening army morale” last year after criticizing the then army chief, Ahmed Gaed Salah, who died suddenly of a heart attack in late December. He had become the most prominent figure in the Hirak protest movement, which emerged in February 2019, shaking Algeria’s deeply entrenched political establishment with weekly mass protests that forced Bouteflika to resign. Abdelghani Badi, a rights lawyer, said in a video posted online that Tabbou had been sentenced to a year in prison, and had been unable to defend himself after suffering a medical problem. “How can we prosecute someone who can’t speak because he has had a stroke?” he said in the video. Another rights lawyer, Mustafa Bouchachi, told local media: “This is a scandal”. On March 11 Tabbou was handed six months in prison and an additional six-month suspended sentence for "undermining national unity". The Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights (LADDH) said at the time he would be released on March 26 for time served since he was detained in September. But on Tuesday morning, his lawyers were summoned to an unscheduled court hearing. "The judge didnt want to listen, and withdrew to deliberate," defense lawyer Amine Sidhom told AFP. "When he got out, he announced a sentence of a year in prison." Said Salhi, vice-president of LADDH, told AFP he was "shocked". "We are stunned by what is happening, not only to Karim Tabbou but to the Algerian justice system. Its beyond comprehension," he said. The justice ministry has not issued an official statement confirming either the verdict or the sentence. LADDH confirmed the one-year sentence for Tabbou, whose portrait is often held aloft at protests. Protests continued after both Gaed Salah’s death and the election of Bouteflika’s replacement as president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, in a vote that was opposed by the demonstrators. The weekly mass marches stopped on Friday, however, after more than a year of continual protests, because of the coronavirus.