The diplomatic row between Paris and Algiers, fanned by the dispute over Algerian influencers – a bilateral dispute in addition to the Western Sahara feud and the friction over the arrest of writer French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal – reached a new level on Friday, January 10. On a visit to Nantes, western France, home to the country’s visa department, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau declared that France “has reached an extremely worrying threshold with Algeria.” Retailleau accused the country, a former French colony, of seeking “to humiliate France” following the failed deportation of one of its nationals.
Targeted by a deportation order after having his residence permit withdrawn, 59-year-old Boualem Naman, nicknamed “Doualemn” or “Ami [my uncle] Boualem” on social media, had been arrested after a video containing a call to violence. After arriving in Algiers under police escort on January 9, he was refused entry, the Algerian authorities invoking, according to Paris, a “territorial ban.” Naman, a cleaner living in Montpellier, in the south, returned to France, where he was placed in administrative detention. His TikTok account, which had 138,600 followers before being closed, regularly broadcast threats against opponents of the Algerian regime, including one targeting the young poet Mohamed Tadjadit, which led to the legal proceedings initiated against him.
You have 76.36% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
