LTo Algerian justice has launched international arrest warrants against the Franco-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud, columnist in the Point and prices Goncourt 2024 for his novel Houris. Last March, Interpol Algeria issued an arrest warrant against the writer, who was noted a second at the beginning of this month of May, we learned from his lawyers.
If it is difficult to know the reasons for this red notice targeting Kamel Daoud so interpol does not communicate on the procedures of which it is recipient, these mandates would be issued by a judge of the court of Oran, city of western Algeria where the journalist and writer lived before settled in France.
“Obviously, they were launched by the Algerian authorities for political considerations,” said Mr.e Jacqueline Laffont who defends the interests of Kamel Daoud. She specifies that her cabinet intends to contest the program of these mandates with the bodies concerned without spreading more due to the confidentiality which surrounds this new soap of the judicial relentlessness targeting the author of Houris.
It is the first time in the history of the Goncourt Prize, created in 1892 by Edmond de Goncourt, that one of his recipients has been the subject of an international arrest warrant for the work for which he was rewarded. “During the civil war in the 1990s, writers were murdered,” comments Kamel Daoud. Today, we put them in prison and we are launching arrest mandates against them. »»
Kamel Daoud is the subject of four complaints in France and Algeria
Since the publication of his successful novel, Kamel Daoud has been the subject of four complaints in France and Algeria. The first was filed on November 18, 2024 at the Oran court by Saada Arbane on the main grounds of privacy. A survivor of a massacre perpetrated in the 1990s by a terrorist group, she accused Kamel Daoud of being inspired by her personal history without her consent and of having violated the secret of her medical file to write her novel, published in August 2024 by Gallimard. The writer has always challenged these accusations by explaining that his work is a fiction that is inspired by this tragic and bloody era which he himself lived and documented as a reporter to the Daily of Oran.
Mme Arbane is defended by the lawyer Fatma Zohra Benbraham who scoured the television sets and multiplied the press conferences to set up a dependent file against Kamel Daoud. During an interview granted in December 2024 to an Algerian national radio, she accused Daoud and his wife of being “criminals par excellence”, thus condemning them before public opinion even before the case passed a court. During the same radio intervention, she argued that President Emmanuel Macron commanded the novel Houris In Gallimard, and then put pressure on the Goncourt jury for the price to be awarded to Kamel Daoud. “This in order to harm Algeria,” said this lawyer. Due to his interventions and underlying accusations against the writer, lawyer Benbraham soon criminalized and politicizing a case which, due to the nature of the complaint, is the responsibility of privacy.
This 2005 law which imposes silence in Algeria
The second judicial case open against Kamel Daoud is at the heart of the problem raised by his novel. She could explain the program of these arrest warrants via Interpol. It is that at the same court of Oran, another complaint was filed during the same period and by the same lawyer for “violation of the law on national reconciliation”. This time, legal action was undertaken on behalf of the national organization of the victims of terrorism that Mr.me Zahra Flici, wife of Laadi Flici, pediatrician murdered by a terrorist group in March 1993 in the Casbah of Algiers.
This prosecution brought against Daoud is based on the provisions of the Charter for Peace and Reconciliation, adopted by referendum in September 2005 under the regime of President Bouteflika. Article 46 of this charter provides for a prison sentence of 3 to 5 years against “anyone who, by his declarations, written or any other act, uses or instrumentalizes the injuries of the national tragedy, to infringe the institutions of the democratic and popular Algerian Republic, weakening the State, harming the honorability of its agents who have served it with dignity, or tarnish the image of Algeria on the international level”.
-Clearly, a written, sound or visual testimony on this national tragedy would expose its author to criminal proceedings and a prison sentence up to five years. It is precisely in this box that fall Houris and its author. Even before the filing of these complaints, Kamel Daoud never ceased to explain that this 2005 law imposes silence, oblivion, amnesia and therefore forbidden it to testify. His novel is also prohibited in Algeria where he is widely exchanged under the coat.
Is this criminal complaint educated at the request of this organization of the victims of the terrorist behind these terms against Kamel Daoud? Has the latter already been sentenced by a court without knowing it? The writer who has lived in France for two years assures that he has never been recipient of a summons of a judge in Oran or another jurisdiction to be heard within the framework of these two complaints.
To discover
The kangaroo of the day
Answer
It is an understatement to say that the issue of these mandates of arrest by Algerian justice constitutes a serious development in the judicial, political and media relentlessness which aims for the Goncourt prize 2024.
Wednesday, May 7, Kamel Daoud was summoned to the Paris court for a first so -called procedural hearing in the context of a legal action brought by Saada Arbane. Through her lawyer William Bourdon, she claims 200,000 euros in damages for non-compliance with her private life. On June 13, he must appear before the 17the Chamber of the Paris Correctional Court, specializing in press crimes, to answer for a defamation complaint, again filed by the same complainant, following a large interview granted by Kamel Daoud to Figaro dated April 3, 2025. To this, there are two international arrest warrants that weigh on his head as a sword of Damocles.
