The strategy is adopted in the corridors of Beauvau: it is about putting an end to impunity on social networks, which some use to insult, but also to call for rape, murder or torture. This is what several Algerians are accused of who encouraged their subscribers to attack French people or opponents of the… Algerian regime!
In this case, seven people were identified, and five of them handed over to justice. Among those arrested, the famous “Doualemn”. His profile is loaded: the 59-year-old man entered illegally for the first time in 1989, before being removed from the territory in 2008, after having served his sentences for six convictions. He returned to France illegally in 2009, before being regularized “as a parent of a French child”.
A residence permit collected in a few minutes
But for fifteen years, no offense has been noted… until the recent publication of a video in which Beauvau accuses him of having called to attack an opponent of the Algerian regime, and of legitimizing the recourse to torture. It is for this reason, and not for his past, that he was arrested on January 5, before being deported to Algeria on the 9th… without success. He was back in France that same evening. However, Boualem N., his real name, had a valid Algerian passport: unlike undocumented foreigners whose recognition is necessary by obtaining a consular pass, he did not need anything else. than his official papers.
The affair seemed easy: in a few hours, the Ministry of the Interior withdrew his residence permit, issued an expulsion order, obtained a place in an administrative detention center (CRA), a place on a plane as well as ‘an escort. But on the Algerian tarmac, the two border police officers (PAF) responsible for repatriating him had the unpleasant surprise of learning that Algeria was refusing its own national, claiming a territorial ban on him.
When and for what reason? Mystery. “We saw on his passport that he has been there at least once in 2022… Nothing leads us to believe that he is really banned from staying”reacted the Ministry of the Interior before the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs clarified its behavior last night: it refuses France the right to expel its national without allowing him to benefit from a “due process, which constitutes a bulwark against the abuse of power”. A few days earlier, the same ministry judged that Emmanuel Macron’s comments on Boualem Sansal, a Franco-Algerian, were “a shameless and unacceptable interference in an internal Algerian matter”…
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The fact remains that the police had no other choice but to bring him back to France – at the risk, otherwise, of being arrested in Algeria themselves! He has since been placed in the CRA, awaiting his judgment which will take place on February 24, a placement contested by his lawyers, as is the expulsion order which targeted him. Its retention on French territory depends, in any case, on discussions with Algiers. Bruno Retailleau did not hesitate to affirm that Algeria was seeking “to humiliate France”.
« We have gone to the limit of what we can do with the prerogatives of the Ministry of the Interior, and we are facing an unprecedented situation in which a country refuses its national even though no terrorist or criminal threat weighs on its country. , we still get annoyed in the corridors of Beauvau. Bruno Retailleau, consequently, did not hesitate to enter the diplomatic field by affirming that France must “evaluate all the means at your disposal” pour “defend one’s interests”.
The ministry cannot decide alone
If Beauvau has a say on visa policy or development aid granted to Algeria, the ministry cannot decide alone. For his part, the Minister of Foreign Affairs still seems to be searching for the limit that Retailleau believes has been crossed: France, he declared, will not have “no other possibility than to retaliate” and “the Algerians continue this posture of escalation”. Either way, it’s up to Emmanuel Macron to decide. His last intervention on this subject concerned Boualem Sansal, victim of poor relations between his two countries: the president had judged his detention ” arbitrary “accusing the Algerian regime of bringing Algeria into “a story that dishonors her”.
For certain specialists, several issues make the response difficult: economic issues, the joint fight against terrorism or even the pressure represented by the strong Algerian diaspora in France. Several means of pressure were mentioned: the number of visas granted (increasing last year), customs tariffs, development aid, money transfers and the famous 1968 agreement – which favors Algerian immigration – whose revision is now requested from Gabriel Attal to Jordan Bardella. For its part, Algeria contested any desire for humiliation, preferring to accuse “the vengeful and hateful extreme right, as well as its certified heralds within the French government”.
It remains to be seen whether France will actually respond, and how.
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