France’s foreign minister threatened Friday to “retaliate” against Algeria if it escalates tensions over the arrests of Algerian social media influencers accused of inciting violence.
Four influencers supportive of Algerian authorities have been arrested in recent days over videos that are suspected of calling for violent acts in France.
Algeria meanwhile has been holding French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal on national security charges. Sansal, who was arrested at Algiers airport in November, is a major figure in modern francophone literature.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told LCI television that France would have “no option but to retaliate” if “the Algerians continue to escalate” the row, citing restrictions to visas or development aid among possible measures.
France’s interior minister Bruno Retailleau accused Algeria of trying to “seeking to humiliate France “during a visit to the western city of Nantes.
“Algeria is currently holding a great writer – Boualem Sansal – who is not only Algerian but also French.
“Can a great country, a great people allow itself to keep in detention for the wrong reasons someone who is old and sick?”
Turning to the influencers, he said it was “out of the question to give a free pass to these individuals who spread hatred and anti-Semitism.
“I think we have reached an extremely worrying threshold with Algeria,” he added. France “cannot tolerate” an “unacceptable situation”.
“While keeping our cool (…) we must now consider all the means we have at our disposal with regards to Algeria.”
‘Dishonouring itself’
One of those arrested is “Doualemn”, a 59-year-old influencer detained in the southern city of Montpellier after a video posted on TikTok.
He was deported on a plane to Algeria Thursday afternoon, according to his lawyer, but was sent back to France the same evening as Algeria had banned him from its territory.
On Thursday, Sofia Benlemmane, a Franco-Algerian woman in her fifties, was also arrested, Lyon prosecutors said.
Followed by more than 300,000 people, she is accused of spreading hate messages and threats against Internet users and against opponents of the Algerian authorities, as well as insulting statements about France.
Arrested in Brest on 3 January, Youcef A., 25, known as “Zazou Youssef” on TikTok, will be tried on 24 February on charges of justifying terrorism.
Placed in pretrial detention, he faces seven years in prison if convicted.
And “Imad Tintin”, 31, was taken into police custody on Saturday in Grenoble for a video, since removed, in which he called for “burning alive, killing and raping on French soil”. He will be tried on 5 March for incitement to acts of terrorism.
Two other Tiktokers with the user names “Abdesslam Bazooka” and “Laksas06” are also being investigated by the French authorities.
Algeria won independence from France in 1962 after a ferocious over seven year war.
French extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, a veteran of that conflict who died this week aged 96, drew a lot of his initial support from the so called “pieds-noirs” (black feet) – French who left Algeria for France when colonial rule ended.
Tensions have surged between France and Algeria after President Emmanuel Macron renewed French support for Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara during a visit to the kingdom last year.
Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, is mostly under the de facto control of Morocco. But it is claimed by the Algiers-backed Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, who want a self-determination referendum.
On Monday, Macron said Algeria was “dishonouring itself” by keeping Sansal behind bars, a comment Algiers said marked “unacceptable and blatant interference”.
