The Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the French ambassador to Algiers last week to send “a severe warning” to Paris, accused of having carried out “aggressive operations and maneuvers” to “destabilize” the country, they said. reported several newspapers on Sunday, December 15. Ambassador Stéphane Romatet was “signified the firm disapproval of the highest Algerian authorities in the face of the numerous French provocations and hostile acts towards Algeria”, writes the government daily El Moujahid.
According to Algerian Eveningthe Algerian side “deliberately insisted on clearly indicating the origin of these malicious acts, the French DGSE (General Directorate of External Security)”. The intelligence agency would have, according to this newspaper, carried out a certain number of “aggressive operations and maneuvers targeting institutions of the Algerian Republic with the obvious aim of destabilizing them and seriously harming our country”.
A “Machiavellian plan”
The summons of Stéphane Romatet “sounds like a severe warning, which comes the day after serious revelations on the involvement (of the) DGSE, in a recruitment campaign of former terrorists in Algeria for the purposes of destabilization” of the country , according to El Moujahid. National television and the public continuous news channel AL24 News recently broadcast a documentary which claimed that a “Machiavellian plan” had been “brilliantly foiled by the Algerian security services”, recalls the newspaper.
The French ambassador was also accused of “equally serious facts, slippages which are no longer just an unfriendly act, but a notorious desire to greatly harm Algeria”, assures Algerian Evening. These are “meetings organized within the walls of several representations flying the French flag in Algeria and recognized as such, bringing together, around French diplomats of various ranks, mainly consular agents reporting to the DGSE, people known for their declared hostility and permanent towards Algerian institutions”, according to this newspaper.
This new episode of tensions between Algiers and Paris occurs while the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal has been in detention for almost a month in Algeria, notably for “undermining territorial integrity”. According to the newspaper The Worldhis arrest on November 16 in Algiers could be due to his statements on a French media outlet reputed to be far-right where he took up Morocco’s thesis according to which its territory had been truncated in favor of Algeria under French colonization.
Franco-Algerian relations were already in turmoil, with Algeria having withdrawn its ambassador to France this summer after Paris’ announcement of strong support for a plan under Moroccan sovereignty for the autonomy of Western Sahara, a claimed territory. by the separatists of the Polisario Front supported by Algiers.