Algiers recalled for “consultations” his ambassador to Paris after the role played by French diplomacy to avoid extradition to Algeria by Amira Bouraoui, an opponent refugee in Tunis.
By Frédéric Bobin
The relationship between Paris and Algiers, subject to cyclical fluctuations, has entered a new period of crisis with the decision of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, announced Wednesday, February 8, to recall “for consultations” the Algerian ambassador to France. This gesture of bad mood responds to the intervention on Monday of the French Embassy in Tunis intended to avoid the Algerian opponent Amira Bouraoui, also holding a French passport, his extradition to Algeria from Tunisia where She had illegally entered three days earlier in order to take refuge in it.
Thanks to the diplomatic assistance of Paris, which obtained the authorization of the Tunisian president, Kaïs Saïed, to let her leave Tunisian territory, the journalist was able to embark on a flight to Lyon. His exile is only one manifestation among so many of the intensification of the ongoing repression in Algeria against the residual nuclei of the Hirak, the protest movement which had enforced the country in 2019 and in 2020, and of which M
In the eyes of Algiers, the role played by France is a “illegal and illegal exfiltration of an Algerian national” claimed by the justice of his country, denounced a press release from President Tebboune. For its part, the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed “the firm condemnation by Algeria of the violation of national sovereignty by diplomatic, consular and security personnel under the French State”. A sign of the anger that reigns on this subject in the official Algerian circles, the daily L’Expression, close to power, castigated “” the barbouzeries “of French diplomacy”.
form of appeasement
The incident takes a counter-footage a rapprochement between the two capitals started six months ago and which wanted to be spectacular, at the very least in its diplomatic staging. The visits to Algiers by Emmanuel Macron at the end of August 2022, then that of Elisabeth Borne, six weeks later, accompanied by fifteen ministers, had solemnized the will of the Head of State to relaunch a bilateral relationship in crisis in crisis Since his words on an Algerian “politico-military system” which, according to him, was built on a “memorial rent” and a “hatred of France”. Held in September 2021 at the Elysée before young people from families who knew the Algerian war, these declarations, who also questioned the existence of “the Algerian nation before French colonization”, had provoked the fury of Algiers which had frozen all cooperation with Paris for long months.
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