The tone is still rising between the two countries. “Algeria seeks to humiliate France,” said Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau on Friday, January 10, the day after the return to France of an Algerian influencer who had been expelled to Algeria after a video calling for the violence. “I think that we have reached an extremely worrying threshold with Algeria,” added the minister, who was speaking during a trip to Nantes.
“France cannot tolerate this situation,” he said, denouncing an “unacceptable situation.” “By keeping our cool […] We must now evaluate all the means at our disposal, vis-à-vis Algeria.”
Placed Tuesday in an administrative detention center (CRA) in Nîmes, “Doualemn”, a 59-year-old influencer, was arrested in Montpellier, after a video posted on TikToK. He was put on a plane Thursday afternoon, according to his lawyer, but was sent back to France on Thursday evening, Algeria having “banned him from territory”, according to the Interior Ministry.
“Total contradiction with the rules”
“I issued an expulsion order and the Algerian authorities did not want to let him land on Algerian soil in total contradiction with the rules,” affirmed Bruno Retailleau, referring to texts of international law according to which “the countries are accountable for their own nationals. In the case of this influencer, “there was no need to have a consular pass since proof that he was an Algerian national was established by means of a valid biometric passport,” the minister further affirmed. . “We put forward a certain number of legal arguments” to the police officers who escorted the influencer on the plane “without ever providing them with any specific proof in terms of law,” the minister said.
The socialist mayor of Montpellier and the prefect of Hérault reported one of the “Doualemn” videos on Saturday. If the translation finally established that the term “kill him” had not been pronounced, the video in question “on the other hand called for a severe correction to be given to a man appearing to reside in Algeria”, the prosecutor of the Republic of Algeria said on Tuesday. Republic of Montpellier, Fabrice Belargent. In any case, it is a “call for torture” targeting “an opponent of the current regime in Algeria”, an appeal justifying the withdrawal of his residence permit and his expulsion, declared Thursday morning the prefect of the ‘Hérault, François-Xavier Lauch.
In a context of diplomatic tensions between Paris and Algiers, three Algerians and a Franco-Algerian woman were arrested in recent days in France after posting content online calling for violent acts, often against opponents of the Algerian regime. . According to several Algerian opponents in France, interviewed by AFP, these particularly violent messages intensified after France, a former colonial power, changed its doctrine on Western Sahara. President Emmanuel Macron aligned himself with Spain and the United States at the end of July, believing that the future of Western Sahara fell “within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty”. This caused a warming with Rabat and a new crisis with Algiers, which has no longer maintained diplomatic relations with its neighbor since August 2021.
Boualem Sansal still incarcerated
Another subject of tension between the two countries, on which Bruno Retailleau spoke: the fate of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, 75, imprisoned since mid-November in Algeria for endangering state security, and who has been in a care unit since mid-December. “Can a large country take the honor of keeping someone who is sick and elderly in detention for bad reasons?” said Bruno Retailleau.
The minister also regretted that France is not mobilizing “sufficiently” the visa policy as part of a migration policy that he wants to be more restrictive. “Visas, of course, are an element of France’s influence, but it is also an element of controlling immigration,” he said. “That means fewer visas,” he added, highlighting the fact that France distributed a quarter of the total visas of the European Union with 2.5 million issued in 2023. While the policy of issuing visas is a responsibility shared with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Retailleau called for more “vigilance” from the services of the Quai d’Orsay. “I would like us to be able to monitor very closely the 20 consular posts which are abroad and which distribute the majority of the number of visas for the destination France,” he pleaded.