It is a case of revenge, which has become a sprawling legal case. Tuesday, October 17, in Constantine (eastern Algeria), the trial in absentia of Amira Bouraoui for “identity theft and clandestine exit from the territory” is due to begin. In January, the flight of the Franco-Algerian opponent, who was then under a ban on leaving Algerian territory, caused an intense diplomatic crisis between France and Algeria. In this case, his mother, Khadija Bourdjia, 71, his cousin as well as an illegal taxi driver, a police officer and the journalist Mustapha Bendjama are also being prosecuted for complicity and “illicit trafficking of migrants”. Apart from Ms. Bourdjia, all the defendants are in pre-trial detention.
The matter does not end there. Two days later, still at the Constantine court, another hearing is scheduled: the appeal trial of Mustapha Bendjama, again, and of Raouf Farrah, a researcher specializing in organized crime, must be held for “publication on the Internet of classified information” and “receipt of funds from abroad with the aim of carrying out acts detrimental to public order”. Six people, including opponents in exile abroad under international arrest warrant, are also cited but on other charges. At the end of August, at first instance, MM. Bendjama and Farrah were sentenced to two years in prison.
If from a distance, these two files appear unrelated, they are nevertheless closely intertwined: the investigation into Amira Bouraoui led to the arrest of Mustapha Bendjama which led to that of Raouf Farrah. They illustrate the repression that has fallen on dissonant voices in Algeria since the Hirak, the popular “movement” which weakened “the system”.
« Humiliation »
In total, fourteen defendants have been charged by the courts since the flight of Amira Bouraoui in these two cases opened following her departure from the country. Some have already been sentenced to heavy sentences, such as journalist Abdou Semmar, a refugee in France, who received 15 years of imprisonment in absentia. He had already been sentenced to death in October 2022 for “endangering national security”, after the publication of articles online on his media Algérie Part. “I don’t even know why. We took people who have no connection with each other and we made a business out of them,” he explains, still surprised. “It’s really a story of revenge, retaliation and intimidation,” insists a friend of Mustapha Bendjama and Raouf Farrah. It was necessary to create a big file to make people forget the humiliation that Amira Bouraoui caused to the Algerian authorities. »
This “humiliation” begins on January 31st. That morning, no one recognized the opponent who got into a Toyota Yaris, in Annaba (eastern Algeria), the town where she is from. The driver Djamel Miassi, at the wheel of an “illegal” as these undeclared but tolerated collective taxis are nicknamed, politely calls this 46-year-old passenger “mom” whom he considers to be “an old lady”, according to the explanations given by he gave during his interrogation.
Veil on her head, makeup for the occasion, Amira Bouraoui has managed to resemble as closely as possible the photo on her mother’s passport, which she uses to cross into Tunisia. On the Algerian side, once at the Oum Teboul border post, the driver hands the papers of the various passengers to an agent, Ali Takida. Did the latter scan the biometric documents in the Albocos database (Algeria Border Control System) to check the travelers’ fingerprints? He doesn’t remember it anymore. The gendarmes, who arrested their colleague from the border police, doubt it, suspecting this official, now prosecuted, of having been corrupt. At 9:32 a.m., the Toyota crosses the border, and Amira Bouraoui, despite being banned from leaving Algeria, heads to Tunis.
Three days later, the Algerian authorities became aware of the opponent’s flight: they were informed of her arrest at Tunis airport. Amira Bouraoui was trying to reach France with her… French passport; However, the border police noticed that there was no trace of his entry into the country and arrested him. Algeria demands her extradition, but warned by her lawyer, the French authorities are mobilizing in favor of their national – she is dual national – to extract from President Kaïs Saïed a green light to let her reach France on February 6. This intervention provokes the ire of the Algerian regime which denounces, in a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs addressed to the French embassy in Algiers, “the clandestine exfiltration by means of a multidimensional operation carried out with the proven involvement of personnel officials of the French State”. New diplomatic crisis between Paris and Algiers, the third since 2020.
However, according to our information, the investigation carried out by the Algerian gendarmes at no time mentions France’s role in the activist’s flight. It is not a question of spies or “French barbouzes” from the general directorate of external security as indicated by the official press, but of a simple escape supported by a cousin and a mother. “Algeria is worse than Netflix,” argues journalist Abdou Semmar who will find himself involved – with others – in what he calls a “judicial tchoutchouka”.
Amira Bouraoui being sheltered somewhere in France, according to her relatives, there must now be guilty people. One of them seems to be the ideal accomplice: journalist Mustapha Bendjama, 33. This young investigative reporter, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Le Provincial in Annaba, has been in the sights of the authorities for years.
Bad treatments
Because of his investigations into the murky links between the political and business world, the summons to police stations and courts followed one after another, as did the convictions, which led to him being described by his colleagues as “the most harassed journalist from Algeria “. He is also known for his pro-Hirak coverage, his support for prisoners of conscience and for press boss Ihsane El Kadi, sentenced in June to seven years in prison, five of which were closed, for “foreign financing”.
His articles are disturbing, and his friendship with Amira Bouraoui, even more so. On February 8, two days after the opponent’s arrival in France, he was arrested in his office. The gendarmes accuse him of having been aware of the activist’s plans in advance and, consequently, of having helped her to leave the country. Its defenders insist on the total absence of material evidence to support these accusations.
The investigators are convinced of the opposite: the exploitation of the young man’s telephone will reinforce their conviction when they come across the numerous exchanges with her. A few months later, Mustapha Bendjama will tell a judge about the mistreatment he was subjected to. During his custody, which lasted eleven days, six gendarmes allegedly put him on his knees, then “they used a screwdriver to scratch my fingers in order to use my fingerprint to unlock my smartphone,” he described. .
With his phone accessible, the gendarmes begin a hunt for the journalist’s sources. By searching it, they unearth – over several years – WhatsApp, Messenger or Signal conversations with various interlocutors and on the basis of these messages, which have nothing to do with Ms. Bouraoui, justice therefore opens another case. In this new file which will concern eight people, the young man is questioned until late at night on discussions with foreign or Algerian colleagues in exile in France, convicted of terrorism and whom Algeria continues to demand from the Elysée or on its links with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Why is he in jail?
Mustapha Bendjama is interviewed at length about work commissioned from him by Global Integrity Index (GII) in 2020 and 2021. For this organization, a partner of the World Bank, he wrote 54 articles on socio-economic indicators for the purposes of a report on good governance in Algeria. The investigators did not like it, especially when Mr. Bendjama sought to find out whether the country’s airports met international standards. “There is nothing sensitive in this information which is public, it is data collection work that we are doing in all African countries,” Arnaud Yombo, its research director, explains extensively to Le Monde. cited in the investigation. I don’t understand why he is in prison. It is only in Algeria that we have this kind of problem. »
For this essay, he was paid 1,500 dollars (1,400 euros). Mustapha Bendjama then asks one of his friends who lives in Tunisia, Raouf Farrah, if he can receive his remuneration on his account. The journalist was supposed to go there to collect the money, but he discovered that he was forbidden to leave the territory. His friend suggests that his father, who also lives in Annaba, give him part of the amount. For this reason, Raouf Farrah will be prosecuted for “receiving funds from abroad with the aim of carrying out acts detrimental to public order”, his father for complicity.
This 30-year-old is a respected researcher at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC). An Algerian and Canadian citizen, he has lived in Tunis for several years with his wife and their daughter. He is regularly interviewed by the Algerian media, particularly for his expertise in the Sahel, and was even, according to those close to him, invited to the national holiday on July 4, 2022 at the Algerian embassy in Tunis.
On hunger strike
It was also he who introduced Mustapha Bendjama to the Global Integrity Index. This information appears on the journalist’s phone and arouses new suspicions – not to say paranoia – among Algerian investigators. As a result, on February 14, while passing through Annaba for his cousin’s wedding, Mr. Farrah was arrested at his parents’ home, six days after the journalist.
The researcher gives the access codes for his phone. Did he have a choice? His father, 67, was detained for two months, his mother questioned and Mr. Farrah’s smartphone scrutinized. Investigators accuse him of conversations with a Japanese diplomat interested in the Sahel and Western Sahara; its links with international NGOs; to have collected money from the diaspora to help the families and lawyers of prisoners of conscience during the Hirak; or even having spoken to “Simon”, a “Franco-Israeli” journalist, based in Tunis. “We often talked because he is a researcher, then he became a friend, but Franco-Israeli? I’m Anglo-Irish,” insists Simon Speakman Cordall.
On October 3, Mustapha Bendjama began a hunger strike to denounce his detention. Amira Bouraoui, a gynecologist by training, started on-call duty in a French hospital. “And through Raouf, the authorities are sending a clear message to researchers in the diaspora: “Stop working on Algeria, otherwise we will put you and your family in prison,” explains a close friend. The fear is there. »
