he was barely 22 years old when his name went around the world. Nicknamed The General, the young man defrauded, from abroad, numerous senior state officials and diplomats by promising them promotions, positions abroad or even to resolve their problems and obtain accommodation, by extracting large sums of money from them in dinars and foreign currency.
This is the enigmatic Yacoub Belhassine, extradited by the German authorities on October 11, 2023, after his arrest in Frankfurt, under several international arrest warrants issued against him.
Placed in detention on October 15, 2023, he appeared yesterday before the penal unit responsible for ICT-related offenses, near the Dar El Beïda court, with seven other defendants, including two of his half-brothers and his half-sister, for several charges, including “fraud”, “usurpation of office”, “unauthorized interference in civil and military public functions”, “forgery and use of forgery in administrative documents”, “violation of exchange regulations for and to foreign countries.
Surrounded by police officers, Yacoub was alone in the dock. He denied part of his confessions before the judicial police, while admitting others and remaining silent on certain facts under the pretext “that these are state secrets” that he “cannot divulge.” in a public hearing. From the outset, the young man tried to exonerate the members of his family, responsible for recovering or receiving the money taken from his victims, by saying that they “are innocent and knew nothing of his activities in Greece”.
Very calm, he asserts: “if I tell you that yes, I defrauded them, will you condemn me and let them go? Am I the only one responsible? I challenge them all to present a single piece of evidence that it was me who called them. They have nothing. Just words.” But the judge confronts him with his communications, his telephone numbers with which he called his victims “to make them fall into an ambush” and the defendant with a broad smile replies: “prove that they are mine.”
Belhassine will nevertheless talk about certain cases, such as that of this secretary of the chief of staff of the Minister of the Interior (Kamel Beldjoud), or of the Algerian diplomats from Nice and Bulgaria, of his telephone calls, on the whatsapp application by presenting himself as “general, senior officer of internal security or even as responsible in the presidential office”. The methods used allowed him to raise colossal funds, intended, according to him, “for the poor and people in difficulty”.
His story is as edifying as the testimonies of the victims, a secretary of the wali of Annaba, a director of education from El Tarf, the general director of Television, as well as representatives of the Sofitel hotel, Ferhat University Abbas of Sétif, Algeria Post, etc. But the prosecutor, who remained silent throughout the debate, requested the maximum sentence against him of 20 years in prison accompanied by a fine of 20 million dinars.
He also requested a sentence of 7 years in prison accompanied by a fine of 70 million dinars and an arrest warrant against one of the defendants on the run, while for the five others, all at large, including members from Belhassine’s family, he requested a sentence of 5 years in prison and a fine of 5 million dinars.
Throughout the delivery of the prosecutor’s representative’s requests, Belhassine did not allow any expression of anger or concern to appear on his youthful face. With his childish smile, he responded to the judge who asked him to say one last word: “they all talked about the scam, but no one said that I was the author. Mr. Judge, the three members of my family have no connection with the facts. They are innocent. I am the one who fully accepts the facts. Not them.” The judge: “speak for yourself, they will do it later.” Belhassine: “I ask you for a reduction in the sentence.”
The six other defendants will take turns to proclaim their innocence and therefore request their release. The judge has put the case under advisement and the verdict will be known on December 4. We will return to the details of the hearing in our next edition.
