MAK leader Ferhat Mehenni speaking outside the UN headquarters in New York on April 20, 2024 [photo credit: TikTok]
In January 2022 French journalist Nicholas Beau reported
on how the DDSE had set up a secret cell with a mandate to carry out
covert operations and executions of Algerian dissidents and political
opponents living in the European diaspora. Two men were reportedly
behind it: Abdelkader Tigha, a former non-commissioned officer in the
Algerian secret services living in exile in Belgium and Colonel Hocine
Abdelhamid, aka Boulahya ("the bearded one"), deputy head of the DDSE
and a former officer in the death squads during the “Années de Plomb” which ran from 1992 until 2002.
After a promising start Beau reported that collaboration between the
two men broke down after Tigha realised his role was to be trapping and
assassinating dissidents in Europe. He then turned double agent and
began monetising the information he had collected from the Bearded One
by tipping off his would-be targets and sharing other DDSE dirty laundry
on the internet with help from Hicham Aboud, a former Algerian army officer turned prominent opposition journalist who runs a You Tube channel with 685,000 followers from his home in Roubaix, northern France.
The regime also targets dissidents through diplomatic and legal
channels. One such case is that of former army corporal Mohamed
Benhalima who had been sentenced to death
in absentia in Algeria for espionage and desertion and was refouled
from Spain in March 2022. He had fled there in 2019 fearing reprisals
after participating in the Hirak and ran a YouTube channel denouncing military officials before he was returned without due process or evaluation of his asylum claim.
In 2021, Mohamed Larbi Zitout, a former Algerian diplomat turned
YouTuber and one of the founders and leaders of Rachad who now lives in
the UK announced
that the British authorities had warned him that he should leave his
home immediately as they had information about "an imminent threat to
his life".
Slimane Bouhafs, an advocate for the rights of Algeria’s Kabyle population and an officially recognised UN refugee was kidnapped on August 25, 2021 from his home in Tunis. Four days later he surfaced in police custody in Algiers and was put on trial for terrorism. He had previously served 18 months in prison for “insulting Islam.”
Another prominent dissident who was targeted by the regime abroad is the French-Algerian activist Amira Bouraoui.
She was sentenced to two years in prison for "offending Islam" and
"attacking the person of the President of the Republic" as well as being
banned from travel but she managed to escape by crossing illegally into
neighbouring Tunisia using her French passport. In February 2023 she
was arrested in Tunisia and faced deportation to Algeria but was allowed
to leave for France instead, sparking a diplomatic incident. Algeria
accused France of assisting her "clandestine and illegal exfiltration"
via Tunisia and recalled its ambassador in Paris. Two of her family
members were subsequently arrested, Amira's sister Wafa Bouraoui was
detained a few hours after she messaged
her more than 19,000 followers on Facebook that the family house was
under siege; Amira’s 73 year old mother Khadidja Bouraoui was held in
custody for a week.
Reports continue to circulate that the Algerian regime is running an
active clandestine external intelligence campaign that systematically
targets dissidents and defectors living in the West, following in the
footsteps of the Saudis, Libyans and others. Some say Algerian
dissidents have recently been subjected to kidnap and extraordinary
rendition back to Algeria from France.
Such stories seem plausible but hard to prove because the DDSE are
more professional than the Saudi Tiger team and French authorities would
always seek to cover up these sorts of operations just as they covered
up and then dropped the police investigations into the seizure of the
two dissident Saudi Princes Saud bin Saif Al Nasr and Prince Sultan bin
Turki who were kidnapped
from Paris in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Algerian dissidents would be
well advised to continue to take full security precautions.
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