Algeria firmly protested on Saturday after French prosecutors accused one of the consular officials under suspicion of participation in the kidnapping of an Algerian influencer of April 2024 in a suburb of Paris.
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.
Three men, one of whom works in an Algerian consulate in France, were accused on Friday in Paris under suspicion of participation in the kidnapping of Amir Boukhors, 41.
Boukhors, known as “Amir Dz”, is an opponent of the Algerian government and has more than one million followers in Tiktok.
The three were accused of reasons that include kidnapping, arbitrary detention and illegal confinement, in relation to a terrorist company, cordination to the National Prosecutor’s Office against France’s terrorism.
They were later arrested in custody.
The Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said he had transported the French ambassador Stephane Romatet to “express his strong protest.”
He said that the accused consular officer “was arrested in public and then task in custody without notification through diplomatic channels.”
He denounced an “crazy argument” based “on the only fact that the mobile phone of the accused Consular officer was allegedly located around the house” or Boukhors.
The Algerian influencer 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.
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Algiers is demanding the return of the influencer to the judgment face, after having issued nine orders of international trial against him, accusing him of fraud and terrorist offensives.
Tense ties
The Algerian Foreign Ministry demanded the immediate release of its consular officer.
He said that the “unprecedented” turn of the events was not “without coincidence”, and was “aimed at torpedoing the process of reviving bilateral relations” agreed by French president Emmanuel Macron and Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
The relations between Paris and Algiers were under tension last year when France recognized Moroccan sovereignty about the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria has long backed the Polisario front in favor of Indendency.
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Algeria remembered her Paris ambassador to protest the change in policy she has seen favoring her rival in North Africa.
Relationships were further grouped in November when Algeria arrested the French-Algerio Boalem Sansal writer for national security positions, after telling a media outlet of extreme French right that the territory of Morocco was truncated in favor of the duration of the duration of Algeria.
Since then, Sansal has been sentenced to five years in jail.
The tensions decreased a bit thanks to the recent phone call between Macron and Tebboune, who expressed their willingness to repair relationships.
And French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Esperanza last Sunday for a “new phase” in relations with Algeria, the duration of a visit to repair the diplomatic crack.
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