Back home since September 5, he is a broken man who agreed to share his story with the daily newspaper. The World. In an article published on November 28, Ismail Snabi, a 28-year-old Franco-Moroccan living in France, in Clichy-sous-Bois, recounts his ordeal, traumatized by the memories that overwhelm him.
It is August 29, 2023, it is 5:00 p.m., the sky is still blue and “the sea flat like a lake”, we describe in the story of this ideal vacation day. The young man is accompanied by his friends Bilal Kissi, Mohammed, the latter’s brother, and Abdelali Mchiouer. Aboard three jet skis, they go to Cap-de-l’Eau, a fishing village located about twenty kilometers west of Saïdia, to have a meal there with their feet in the water. Once their meal is finished, it’s time to go home, because it’s already getting late. The four men got into their vehicles, the third being shared by Bilal Kissi and Abdelali Mchiouer.
A day that started so well…
«We do tricks, Snapchats, remembers Ismail. «Then, night falls, the mist rises., he continues, immersed in this still vivid memory. The four friends, who think they are heading towards the Saïdia marina, begin to doubt their route when they realize that the return journey is excessively long. “I stop and tell Mohamed that we made a mistake. We just see something white in the distance. There is no sign at sea», says this father of three boys, aged 3, 4 and 6.
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It’s almost 8:00 p.m. It is then that a boat emerges from the mist and rushes towards them at full speed, zigzagging between the jet-skis, as if to separate them. On board, Algerian coast guards. Initially, explains Ismail Snabi, “I’m happy to see them. I tell myself that they will help us, show us the way”. The young man addresses them in Arabic, still confident, and says: “We were wrong, we come from Morocco“. But the only response, the soldiers shouted “Get the hell out! Morocco is over there“. The four men are not told twice and immediately turn around.
The (still) unpunished crimes of the Algerian army
By giving his precious testimony, the man places the missing piece in the puzzle, thus allowing the scene to be faithfully reconstructed. As the four friends now head towards the Moroccan coast, they hear noises that sound like gunshots. Panicked, he throws himself into the water. “I start to ‘chahed’ as if my time had come, and there I hear: “You’re Jewish, why are you?chahed’?”», he says. Quickly fished out by the Algerian soldiers, he found himself pinned to the bottom of the boat, hands and feet tied.like a lamb». “I have a boot on my cheek, they hit me, and they ask me if I went to Israel,” he continues.
At this point, Ismail doesn’t yet know what happened to his friends. He won’t know until much later. If the young man is taken by the military, he heads to Algeria, this is not the case for his friends. Bilal Kissi, a 28-year-old Franco-Moroccan, and Abdelali Mchiouer, a 40-year-old Moroccan living in the Paris suburbs, were killed in cold blood that evening by the Algerian soldiers. The only other survivor of this killing, Mohamed Kissi, 33, managed to return to the Moroccan coast and bear witness to the massacre committed by the Algerian soldiers.
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This day, which had started so well, became the “hell” in which Ismail Snabi lives, a memory that he dwells on to the point of becoming “fou“. Because man is far from being at the end of his troubles. His nightmare has only just begun…
In the land of black boots and torture
At the end of his journey to the bottom of the boat, where the soldiers pin him to the ground, Ismail finds himself in Algeria, locked in a prefab. “I only had my life jacket, my blue swim shorts, a watch, my phone and a small bag with money», he relates. Then begins an interrogation, the nature of the questions challenges and reminds us, if that were still necessary, of the deep anti-Semitism that drives the military junta in power. “I am asked again if I have been to Israel, if I drink alcohol, if I can recite this or that surah from the Koran. I repeat that I am French», he recalls Ismail Snabi, who does not hold a Moroccan passport.
And to continue the story of his ordeal: «JI get beaten, my head is put in a bucket of water. I’m tortured, what’s that?. An agent passes the flame of a lighter under his beard. “At this moment, I’m so scared that it doesn’t hurt,” he remembers. But the military is not going to stop there. To their acts of torture, they decide to add a dose of perversity by taking a photo of the young man alongside his jet-ski riddled with bullets, such as “a trophy» hunting. It was by seeing the state of the machine that Ismail Snabi understood what had happened, that the noises heard before throwing himself into the water were indeed gunshots, and that the soldiers had fired them. actually targeted, his friends and him.
A parody of a trial
The day after his arrest, the young man was put in immediate court, wearing only his swimming shorts, we explain in the article in Monde. He was initially sentenced to three months in prison for “illegal entry» and for “offense of smuggling a vehicle“. On September 6, his sentence increased to six months in prison and a fine of 15 million dinars, or 100,000 euros. A sum which corresponds to five times the value of the jet-ski, says Algerian customs, who have filed a civil suit. And on October 1, this simulacrum of the judicial system sentenced him this time to one year in prison.
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According to the version of the Algerian Ministry of Defense, under fire from criticism and accusations from the families, the four men would have been “ordered to stop”, but they would have fled. The coast guard would therefore have noted a “refusal to comply» et «given that this border maritime region records increased activity of drug trafficking gangs and organized crime (…), shots were fired, forcing one of the jet skis to stop, while the other two fled», Explained the ministry in question in a press release.
A version categorically denied by the other survivor, Mohamed Kissi, and now by Ismail Snabi, who relate the facts in an identical manner. “As we were on fuel reserve, we set off again at low revs. We couldn’t escape, it’s like we were on scooters and they were on motorcycles. Everything changed in a few seconds», se remémore Ismail Snabi.
At the end of these three speedy trials, the Franco-Moroccan was incarcerated, in turn, in four different prisons. The story told by The World of his daily life is chilling. He “sleeps on wet blankets, (…) loses 30 kilos – he weighed 120-, sleep, reason“. To torture him even more, a month after his incarceration, a police officer handed him his phone. On the screen, he sees the photo of his friend, Abdelali Mchiouer, “lying”… dead. It is this same body that Algeria refused to return to his family in Morocco for more than four months. A terrible parenthesis during which, despite the pleas of relatives and the legal and administrative procedures undertaken from Morocco, the restitution of the body was the subject of odious blackmail. We won’t tell him anything about his other friends. It was during a visit from his brother Jamal, a few weeks later, that he learned of the death of Bilal Kissi. “Still had to deal with that. I cried until I was exhausted», he whispers, “I lost two brothers for nothing».
Blackmail, hostage taking and threats… the true face of the Algiers regime
His sentence will soon come to an end, with his release set for August 28, 2024. But before that, he will still have to pay his exorbitant fine of 100,000 euros, otherwise, “it was a few more years“, explain The World. To raise this sum, Ismail Snabi, a professional mechanic in Seine-Saint-Denis, with a salary of 1,700 euros, says he went into debt to his relatives. “I paid a ransom, I was a hostage», he summarizes.
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Upon his release from prison, after a year of nightmare, the young man was arrested by an Algerian police officer, who advised him, as a barely veiled threat, “to put his story aside, not to mention his affair in France [car] if you speak, don’t forget that you have family in Algeria».
The reason for such persistence? Ismail and his family still struggle to understand it, but certainly, they can explain it by his dual Moroccan nationality. “Is it because he is also Moroccan that he was in prison?”asks his Algerian wife, to whom the authorities of her own country refused to grant a visa, under the pretext that she presented French papers.
Now being followed by a psychiatrist, Ismail Snabi will soon be interviewed by the French police, reports The Worldas part of a complaint against X filed by the Kissi family, for intentional homicide.
