Three Algerians were recently arrested for posting content online calling for violent acts, often against opponents of the Algerian regime. One of them was arrested Friday near Grenoble after publishing a video which, since removed, called for “burning alive, killing and raping on French soil”, according to an image capture taken by the Minister of Defense. ‘Interior, Bruno Retailleau.
“I am with you Zazou”, this man also posted, addressing another Algerian Internet user, Youcef A., known as “Zazou Youssef”. Arrested a few hours earlier, he called for attacks to be carried out in France against “opponents of the regime in place in Algeria”, according to French justice.
“Kill him, let him suffer,” the third arrested said on TikTok, referring to an Algerian anti-regime protester. Justice has also opened investigations against two other Franco-Algerian influencers for hateful videos. “Dozens” of Algerian or Franco-Algerian Internet users have posted hostile content online, says Algerian opponent Chawki Benzehra. Youcef A. was followed on TikTok by more than 400,000 subscribers. His account has since been deleted by the platform.
” Treason “
A phenomenon “orchestrated” by the Algerian authorities, accuses Mr. Benzehra, himself a political refugee in France. This is evidenced, he says, by the fact that the Grand Mosque of Paris, financed by Algeria, “also welcomes influencers”. “Defamatory” remarks emanating from an “obscure blogger” and part of an “intolerable slanderous campaign”, reacted the religious establishment, which conversely underlines its “constructive role for the relationship between the two countries”.
According to several Algerian opponents in France, these particularly violent messages intensified after France, a former colonial power, changed its doctrine on Western Sahara. This former Spanish colony with undefined status at the UN has been the scene of a conflict for half a century between Morocco and the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers.
Emmanuel Macron aligned himself with Spain and the United States at the end of July, believing that the future of Western Sahara fell “within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty”. This caused a warming with Rabat and a new crisis with Algiers, which has no longer maintained diplomatic relations with its neighbor since August 2021.
While the French president had begun in the summer of 2022 a “ rapprochement ” with Algeria on “the question of memory, of the colonial past”, linked to the war of independence which left hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, its positioning on Western Sahara was experienced by Algiers as “a betrayal”, observes Riccardo Fabiani, analyst for the NGO Crisis group.
-Another subject of tension, the fate of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, 75 years old, incarcerated since mid-November in Algeria for endangering state security, and who has been in a care unit since mid-December .
“Casual”
According to the French daily Le Monde, Algiers would have taken badly statements by Mr. Sansal to the French media Frontières, reputed to be far-right, taking up Morocco’s position according to which the country’s territory would have been truncated under French colonization for the benefit of ‘Algeria.
“The Algeria that we love so much […] enters into a story that dishonors it, to prevent a seriously ill man from seeking treatment,” Emmanuel Macron said on Monday, demanding the release of the writer “detained in a totally arbitrary manner.”
“Remarks from the French president which dishonor, above all, the one who believed he had to make them in such a casual and light manner,” Algerian diplomacy reacted on Tuesday, denouncing “a shameless and unacceptable interference in an internal Algerian matter”. “A point of no return has just been reached,” notes Hasni Abidi, director of the Center for Studies on the Arab and Mediterranean World in Geneva.
These “harsh and unusual remarks” from Macron will “strengthen the supporters of a total break between the two countries” and “illustrate the failure of the (French) president in his Algerian policy”, he regrets. “We are faced with a French head of state who does not know how to behave”, “gives way to his emotions, does not respect forms”, and an Algerian power with “very great sensitivity for everything that comes of the French State”, analyzes CNRS researcher Karima Dirèche.
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