“We respect the sovereignty of States and peoples, but in return we also want France to be respected. No historical pain, even if it is very acute, authorizes a country to offend France,” insists the Minister of the Interior, during current questions to the government this January 22.
“The recent expulsion of an influencer, sent back to Roissy by Algeria which refused to welcome him, illustrates the urgency of action,” called out Les Républicains senator Henry Leroy. The elected official from Alpes-Maritimes refers to the case of the Algerian influencer Doualemn, 59, arrested in Montpellier on January 7, after posting a video on TikTok in which he made calls for murder. Put on a plane on January 9 for Algeria, the country decided to send him back to France in the evening.
Franco-Algerian agreement of 1968: “This is an opportunity to put the discussion back on the table”
“Obviously Algeria has ignored the law,” defends the Minister of the Interior before the senators on January 22. “International law is very simple, as long as you can prove the nationality of a national – and we have done it – then the country of origin must accept it. That wasn’t the case,” he explains.
Faced with this situation, Bruno Retailleau promises that France “will not let anything pass”. From there to breaking the agreements concluded in 1968, which regulate the employment and stay of Algerian nationals in France, as requested by Senator Henry Leroy? “You know perfectly well what I think of these agreements. But, in the circumstances, the gradation of the response does not belong to me”, evacuates the Minister of the Interior, who had defended a resolution denunciation of the agreement in June 2023, when he was still president of the LR group in Senate.
-At the Public Senate microphone a few minutes later, questioned about the 1968 agreements, the Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Interior François-Noël Buffet also returned the ball “to the highest level of the French State”. “This is an opportunity to put the discussion back on the table,” he believes, while recalling that the decision rests with the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister.
Another Algerian influencer “arrested a few hours ago”
In the context of degraded relations between France and Algeria, particularly since the incarceration of the writer Boualem Sansal in Algiers in mid-November, other influencers have been arrested. All are accused of spreading hateful comments on social networks. “Each time these unacceptable comments were made, we asked the Pharos platform to delete the videos, and they were. We located, arrested and systematically brought these individuals to justice,” emphasizes Bruno Retailleau.
Before the senators, the Minister of the Interior once again mentioned the case of another influencer “arrested a few hours ago”. Earlier in the day, Bruno Retailleau had already announced the arrest of this Algerian influencer, who “called for violent acts to be committed on French territory on TikTok”. An announcement which earned the Minister of the Interior a refocusing from the Paris prosecutor's office, a few hours later. The public prosecutor denounced to the AFP a “premature leak”, specifying that “nothing had been held at this stage” against the influencer in question.
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