A few weeks after the arrest of Boualem Sansal, tensions between France and Algeria are at their height. This Sunday, December 15, reports Le Figarothree Algerian media including the government daily, devote their front page to the summoning of the French ambassador to Algeria, Stéphane Romatet, by Algerian Foreign Affairs. “Last summons!” », “Algeria warns Paris: patience has limits” or even “A severe warning from Algiers”we can read in these press outlets.
This decision by the Algerian authorities would be linked to the broadcast last week of a documentary, on the state television channel and on the public continuous news channel AL24, which affirmed that the Algerian intelligence services had « foiled a plot orchestrated by French intelligence services aimed at destabilizing Algeria ».
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According to the Algerian press, the French ambassador was informed that Algiers would no longer accept such “practices and acts of blackmail” from the French authorities, but also from the “circles that collaborate with them, notably lobbies and far-right factions”.
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According to the same media, the Algerian authorities also accuse the French authorities of authorizing individuals « hostile to state institutions” Algerian to meet in French diplomatic premises in Algeria and provide protection to groups « terrorists »such as the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia and Rachad, a movement created in Europe in 2007 which brings together opponents in exile, including former executives of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).
This worsening of Franco-Algerian relations occurs in a context marked by the arrest of Franco-Algerian Boualem Sansal. This writer critical of the Algerian government was arrested at Algiers airport in mid-November, under article 87 bis of the penal code, which punishes all attacks on state security. Opacity, nevertheless, dominates: if the official Algerian press agency described the writer as “puppet of anti-Algerian revisionism”no information has filtered out on the precise reasons held against him.
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He received the support of many French political leaders and intellectuals, denouncing an arbitrary arrest and an attack on freedom of expression. On the government side, the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati deplored a “detention without serious basis”.
France
