If Algeria ”continues the escalation”, France will have to ”retaliate”, says the Minister of Foreign Affairs

“Algeria seeks to humiliate France” which does not refrain from “retaliating”: the return to Paris of an Algerian influencer expelled to his country aroused the anger of the French government on Friday and soured already Franco-Algerian relations tense.

Three Algerians and a Franco-Algerian woman were recently arrested for having posted hateful content against France online, in particular inciting people to “burn alive, kill and rape”, while calling for violent acts, often against opponents of the Algerian regime.

“We have reached an extremely worrying threshold with Algeria,” said French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, one of the heavyweights in François Bayrou’s government and a figure from the sovereignist right and renowned for his hostile line on Algeria. ‘immigration.

“I think that France cannot tolerate this situation,” he said, calling for “to evaluate all the means that are at our disposal vis-à-vis Algeria” to “defend our interests.” “.

While French President Emmanuel Macron had begun in 2022 a “rification” with Algeria on “the question of the colonial past”, issues of tension have accumulated between the two countries, partners at the economic and security level.

“Doualemn”, a 59-year-old influencer, was arrested in Montpellier in the south of France, after a contentious video on TikToK, then put on a plane Thursday afternoon for Algeria from where he was sent back to France on same evening, Algeria having “banned him from territory”, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

“I issued an expulsion order and the Algerian authorities did not want to let him land on Algerian soil, in total contradiction with the rules,” said Mr. Retailleau.

France will have “no other option than to retaliate” if “the Algerians continue this posture of escalation,” added French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot on Friday, after Algiers’ dismissal of the influencer Algerian expelled by Paris.

Among “the levers that we could activate” include “visas (…), development aid” or even “a certain number of other cooperation subjects”, he detailed on the LCI channel, saying he was “stunned” that “the Algerian authorities have “refused to take back one of their nationals”, whose case is now “judicialized” in France.

For his part, former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal calls for denouncing the Franco-Algerian agreement of 1968, to “set the limits and assume the balance of power with Algeria”.

Sahara occidental

The influencer was returned to an administrative detention center in the Paris region in the evening.

In its video, “Doualemn” called for “giving a severe correction to a man appearing to reside in Algeria,” said Montpellier public prosecutor Fabrice Belargent on Tuesday.

According to several Algerian opponents in France, interviewed by AFP, these messages intensified after France changed its doctrine on Western Sahara.

This former Spanish colony with undefined status at the UN has been the scene of a conflict for half a century between Morocco and the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers.

President Emmanuel Macron aligned himself with Spain and the United States at the end of July, believing that the future of Western Sahara fell “within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty”. Which caused a warming with Rabat and a new crisis with Algiers.

“Not up to par”

Another subject of tension, the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, 75, ill, has been incarcerated since mid-November in Algeria for endangering state security.

“The Algeria that we love so much and with which we share so many children and so many stories is entering into a story that dishonors it, preventing a seriously ill man from getting treatment. It is not up to what it is,” Mr. Macron said in front of the French ambassadors gathered at the Elysée.

A “shameless and unacceptable interference in an internal Algerian matter”, reacted the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Traveling to Nantes (west), headquarters of the central civil status service, Mr. Retailleau also announced that he wanted France to issue “fewer visas” in the future.

Visas, of course, are an element of France’s influence, but it is also an element of controlling immigration,” he declared.

“I would like us to be able to monitor very closely the 20 consular posts which are abroad and which distribute the majority of the number of visas for the destination France,” he pleaded.