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Former Minister of Industry and Mines Abdeslam Bouchouareb, who is on the run abroad, asked the French courts on Wednesday, September 18, to refuse his extradition to Algeria, where he was sentenced to heavy prison terms on corruption charges in several cases in the anti-corruption trials that followed the 2019 Hirak and Bouteflika’s resignation in April of the same year. The French courts will rule on Algeria’s extradition requests on October 9.
Abdeslam Bouchouareb, MP and then Minister of Industry and Mines from April 2014 to May 2017 under the presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika (who died in 2021), was sentenced in absentia to sentences totaling one hundred years in prison, recalls the AFP press agency, which reports the information, taken up this Thursday, September 19 by the French press.
The Algerian justice system has issued several extradition requests for him to answer the charges brought against him. These requests concern convictions for corruption, favoritism and embezzlement of public funds.
“In total, the court has received eight extradition requests, three to prosecute and five to execute five judgments, each sentencing the former minister to twenty years in prison, a fine of several million Algerian dinars, and the confiscation of his assets for acts of corruption, favoritism, conflict of interest and other misappropriation of public funds,” the same source said.
Based in France, Bouchouareb under judicial supervision since October 2023
Based in France, in the Alpes-Maritimes, Abdeslam Bouchouareb, 72, has been under judicial supervision since October 2023, “with the only obligations of not leaving France, where he legally resides, and of handing over his passport”, according to AFP.
In recent months, French judges have requested from the Algerian judicial authorities “two additional pieces of information in order to obtain clarification on legal points, also demanding a formal commitment that the death penalty, if incurred, “will neither be requested nor applied”, adds the same source.
The former minister’s defense team is asking the French justice system not to extradite him to Algeria. His lawyer, Benjamin Bohbot, believes that his client is the subject of “political prosecution” as part of a “purge of the Bouteflika era.”
The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal will make a decision on his extradition on October 9.
