the winner of the Goncourt prize and his wife targeted by two complaints in Algeria

“As soon as the book was published, we filed two complaints against Kamel Daoud and his wife Aicha Dehdouh, the psychiatrist who treated the victim” Saâda Arbane, declared lawyer Fatima Benbraham, specifying that she had contacted the Oran court, place of residence of Kamel Daoud and his wife in Algeria.

Saâda Arbane, survivor of a massacre during the civil war in Algeria in the 1990s, spoke on an Algerian channel accusing the author of having revealed her story in the novel without her authorization.

Medical confidentiality

“The first complaint was filed in the name of the National Organization of Victims of Terrorism” and “the second in the name of the victim,” said Me Benbraham, assuring that their filing dated back to August, “a few days after the publication of the book”, and well before the award of the Goncourt Prize to the novel at the beginning of November. “We didn't want to talk about it, so that it wouldn't be said that we wanted to disrupt the author's nomination for the prize,” she said.

According to this well-known lawyer in Algeria, the complaints relate to “the violation of medical confidentiality, since the doctor (the wife of Kamel Daoud, Editor's note) handed over her entire patient's file to her husband, as well as to the defamation of the victims of terrorism and the violation of the law on national reconciliation”, which prohibits any publication on the period of the civil war between 1992 and 2002.

“Defamatory campaigns”

Last Friday, Saada Arbane appeared on the One TV television channel claiming that the story of the novel “Houris” is hers. This survivor of an attempted throat slitting by armed Islamists said she recognized elements of her life: “her cannula (for breathing and speaking, Editor's note), her scars, her tattoos, her hairdressing salon.”

Kamel Daoud did not respond to these accusations, but his French publisher Gallimard denounced on Monday the “violent defamatory campaigns orchestrated by certain media close to a regime whose nature no one is ignorant of”, against the writer since the publication of the novel.