A first complaint against Kamel Daoud accepted

An Algerian court accepted a first complaint against the Franco-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud and his psychiatrist wife for having revealed and used the story of a patient for the writing of his novel “Houris”, awarded the Prix Goncourt 2024 , assured the plaintiff’s lawyer on Thursday.

“We paid the legal costs, which means that the public prosecutor’s office (in Oran) accepted the complaint,” Fatima Benbraham told the press in Algiers, anticipating an upcoming summons.

According to the lawyer, Mr. Daoud and his wife, who reside in France, will also be summoned to Oran and tried in absentia if they do not appear.

Two appeals were filed against Mr. Daoud and his wife who treated Saâda Arbane, a survivor of a massacre during the dark decade of civil war in Algeria (1992-2002, 200,000 dead).

A complaint comes from Ms. Arbane who accuses them of having used her story without her consent, and another from the National Organization of Victims of Terrorism.

“Kamel Daoud used the victim’s tragedy to gain glory,” criticized the lawyer, asserting that she had asked the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the “disappearance of the medical file” from the hospital and accusing Daoud’s wife of having “given it to her husband to make a novel”.

“The penal code condemns the disclosure of professional secrecy” for doctors, underlined the lawyer, an offense punishable by six months of imprisonment.

The lawyer showed photos of Saâda Arbane when she arrived at the hospital as a child in 1999, just after an attempted throat slitting perpetrated by jihadists.

“Kamel Daoud asked the victim to publish his story in a novel in exchange for money, but she refused,” she continued, adding that “he nevertheless published his book with the help of his woman, who told him about the tattoo she had on her back, like in the novel Houris.

The complaint also refers to article 46 of the so-called national reconciliation law, which provides for up to five years in prison for “any person who, through his statements, his writings or any other action, exploits the wounds of the tragedy national”.

On November 15, Saada Arbane appeared on the One TV channel affirming that the story of the novel “Houris” was his because he cites personal elements such as “his cannula (for breathing and speaking, editor’s note), his scars, his tattoos, her hair salon”, her relationship with her mother and her desire to have an abortion.

Kamel Daoud did not respond to these accusations, but his French publisher Gallimard denounced on Monday the “violent defamatory campaigns orchestrated (against him) by certain media close to a regime whose nature no one is ignorant of”.