France Algeria crisis: 12 French diplomats expelled
The détente between Paris and Algiers lasted very little. A week after French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot's visit to Algeria, the latter announced on Monday 14 April that Algiers had asked 12 diplomatic representatives of the French embassy to leave Algerian territory within 48 hours . Jean-Noël Barrot warned in response that Paris is ready for immediate retaliation if Algiers expels its agents. The North African country's decision comes after the arrest of one of its consular agents in Paris.
“I ask the Algerian authorities to renounce these expulsion measures which have no connection with the ongoing judicial proceedings,” Jean-Noël Barrot said in a written statement sent to journalists. “If the decision to expel our consular officers were upheld, we would have no choice but to respond immediately,” he added.
On Monday evening, Algiers defended a "sovereign" decision, attributing "entire responsibility" for this new tension between the two countries to the French Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau. In a statement, the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that 12 people had been declared persona non grata in response to the arrest in France of an Algerian consular agent, an “unworthy act” which is “the consequence of the negative, deplorable and constant attitude of the French Interior Minister towards Algeria” , it added.
Among the agents that Algiers wants to expel, some are officials from the Ministry of the Interior, a diplomatic source told Agence France-Presse, just as Bruno Retailleau – a supporter of a hard line against Algiers – was visiting Morocco on Monday.
French Foreign Ministry, government source
Arrest of an Algerian consular agent
This injunction from the Algerian regime comes after the detention in France on Saturday of one of its consular agents , suspected of being involved in the kidnapping, at the end of April 2024, on French soil, of the Algerian influencer Amir Boukhors . “This new unacceptable and unspeakable development will cause serious damage to Franco-Algerian relations,” the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned in a statement, promising not to “leave this situation without consequences.”
Three men, including this consular officer, were investigated in Paris on Friday for arrest, kidnapping, abduction or arbitrary detention followed by release before the seventh day, in connection with a terrorist enterprise, according to the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office.
Already on Saturday, the Algerian Foreign Ministry had denounced the "worn and bizarre argument" of the French Interior Ministry, criticizing an "inadmissible judicial conspiracy" based "on the sole fact that the cell phone of the accused consular agent would have traced the home address of the mobster" Amir Boukhors.
This Algerian influencer, who has lived in France since 2016, obtained political asylum in 2023. His country claims him to judge him. Algiers issued nine international arrest warrants against him, accusing him of fraud and terrorist crimes. In 2022, French justice refused to proceed with his extradition.
The 41-year-old "Amir DZ", followed by over one million followers on TikTok, was the victim "of two serious attacks, one in 2022 and the other on the evening of April 29, 2024" , the day of his kidnapping in the southern suburbs of Paris, before being released the following day, according to his lawyer Eric Plouvier.
This new wave of tension contrasts with the announcement last week by the French Foreign Minister of "a new phase" in relations between Paris and Algiers, at the end of a conversation with his counterpart, Ahmed Attaf, and above all with the Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune. French President Emmanuel Macron and Tebboune had seen the end of a crisis of rare intensity a few days earlier, which had brought the two countries to the brink of diplomatic rupture.
So the Paris-Algiers rapprochement has already failed, and this leaves the problem of the Paris/Fez/Algiers tripartite relationship unresolved.
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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/crisi-francia-algeria-12-diplomatici-francesi-espulsi/ on Tue, 15 Apr 2025 11:00:09 +0000.