“We are going to shoot you (…). We are going to rape you (…). Shoot, we'll bury them with the Jews. » The 35-second video is in Arabic and is aimed at people who will demonstrate against the Algerian regime in Algeria and France, “on January 1st”. The French subtitles are not original. Everything is attributed to a Brest influencer of Algerian origin with the nickname “zazouyoucef”, followed by 410,000 subscribers on the social network TikTok. The platform banned the account early this Thursday afternoon.
Sentenced in December 2023
The video in question, an assembly of several short extracts, features a young man dressed in a white Inter Milan t-shirt, stringy hair, a thin mustache and a collar of beard. Relayed tens of thousands of times since its broadcast on the evening of December 31, notably by far-right accounts, this video ignited social networks, with numerous messages calling out the Minister of the Interior.
Questioned about this, the Brest prosecutor did not respond to our requests. But, according to several sources, a judicial investigation is underway.
The young man, whom Le Télégramme identified, was sentenced to 12 months in prison in December 2023, for having participated, in Brest, in the riots of June 29 and 30, 2023 following the death of Nahel, in Nanterre, two days earlier. During this hearing, Youcef A., born in Algeria in November 1999, did not appear to be a person known or followed for radicalization but for other common law acts.
The author of the subtitles alerted on December 29
The 35-second video was apparently posted online by a man presenting himself as “an Algerian activist who had taken refuge in France” whom Le Télégramme was able to contact this Thursday. “I was alerted by contacts in Algeria and also in France, who sent me the original video, Sunday December 29. I very quickly made a report to the French authorities, via the specialized Pharos platform. When I saw that this influencer did it again with a second intervention, I wanted to alert, by posting a summary of his first video online, Tuesday evening, then the second, with extracts for which I created the subtitles . »
In the original video of five minutes and six seconds that Le Télégramme was able to retrieve and entrust to an interpreter, the young man targets “those who threaten to divide Algeria and destroy order”. He seems to be responding to people who took him to task on TikTok. In a second video published, the young man maintains, according to the translations reported by our interpreter, his initial remarks.
These sequences take place in the context of strong tensions between the two countries. Particularly since the incarceration of the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, fighting to defend fundamental freedoms against a regime accused of increasingly restricting democratic space. Contacted, Youcef A. did not respond to our request. Yesterday afternoon, on another social network that he uses very assiduously, he continued to post, as if nothing had happened, messages devoted to his other apparent passion: football.
France
