Algeria has asked 12 French officials to leave 48 hours, said French Foreign Minister on Monday, April 14, added that this was left to the sentence of three Algerian citizens in France. “I am making the Algerian authorities abandon these expulsion measures … If the decision to send our officials is maintained, we will not have another option to respond immediately,” said Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barot.
The 12 include some members of the French Interior Ministry, a diplomatic source told the France Presse agency. The accusation arrives at a delicate time in relations between Algeria and its old colonial power, with Algiers stating that the measure was aimed at rummaging recent attempts to repair ties.
On Friday, French prosecutors accused three Algerians, including a consular official, under suspicion of participation in the kidnapping of an Algerian influencer of April 2024, Amir Boukhors, in a suburb of Paris. Boukhors, known as “Amir Dz”, is an opponent of the Algerian government and has more than one million followers in Tiktok.
He has been in France since 2016 and was awarded political asylum in 2023. He was kidnapped in April 2024 and released the next day, according to his lawyer. Algiers is demanding the return of the influencer to the judgment face, after having issued nine international trial orders against him, accusing him of fraud and terrorist crimes.
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