Activist Amira Bouraoui was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison on Tuesday, November 7, by the Constantine court (eastern Algeria) for “identity theft and clandestine exit from the territory.” “I expected it, but it’s excessive. This sentence proves that my trial was political,” the Franco-Algerian opponent immediately reacted to Le Monde.
At the end of January, the woman who was then subject to an exit ban from Algerian territory (ISTN) had illegally left her country, causing an intense diplomatic crisis between France and Algeria. “My ISTN was unfounded, it’s one of the reasons that pushed me to leave,” she wants to clarify.
Four other people were also sentenced in this case for complicity and “illicit trafficking of migrants”: his mother Khadija Bourdjia, 71, to one year suspended; his cousin, an illegal taxi driver and a friend, the journalist Mustapha Bendjama, to six months in prison and an Algerian police officer to three years in prison.
“What the Algerian state did to my family is revenge. My cousin’s only fault was that he carried me 500 meters from home to the taxi station because I had a suitcase, my mother’s was that I took her passport. The policeman and the driver did nothing. And Mustapha Bendjema never helped me, assures Amira Bouraoui. I am sad for Algeria which made a spectacle of itself just because an activist wanted to find her child in France, which is also my country. » According to a defense attorney who wishes to remain anonymous, “The file was empty. The Bouraoui affair was no longer in the news, this trial did not interest Algerian public opinion. »
Serial affairs
An indifference that contrasts with the controversy and diplomatic tensions that prevailed when the affair broke out. While the activist had fled her country for Tunisia on January 31, France put pressure on Tunis to let her reach France – which she obtained on February 6. An intervention considered as a “clandestine exfiltration by means of a multidimensional operation carried out with the proven involvement of official personnel of the French State”, according to the terms of a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs addressed to the French Embassy in Algiers.
According to information from Le Monde, the investigation carried out in the following months by the Algerian gendarmes was unable to prove the role played by France. No trace of spies or “French barbouzes” from the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE), as indicated by the official press, but of a simple personal escape.
The investigation into Amira Bouraoui led to the arrest on February 8 – two days after the opponent’s arrival in France – of journalist Mustapha Bendjama, 33, suspected of having been aware of the activist’s plans in advance. and, therefore, of having helped her to leave the country. Its defenders insist on the total absence of material evidence to support these accusations.
This young reporter, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Le Provincial in Annaba, has been in the sights of the authorities for years for his investigations into the murky links between the political and business worlds, and pro-Hirak coverage (the “movement”). popular movement which weakened “the system” from February 2019) and its support for prisoners of conscience and press boss Ihsane El Kadi, sentenced in June to seven years in prison, including five years, for “foreign financing”.
During his custody, which lasted eleven days, the gendarmerie was able to access his phone and, in a hunt for the journalist’s sources, investigators unearthed – over several years – WhatsApp, Messenger or Signal conversations with various interlocutors . And it is on the basis of these messages, which however have nothing to do with Ms. Bouraoui, that justice decided to open another legal case 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”. In total, nine people are concerned and some were arrested and subsequently detained, such as Canadian-Algerian researcher Raouf Farrah.
In this case, MM. Bendjama and Farrah were sentenced on appeal on October 26 to twelve months’ imprisonment, eight of which were closed. Having served his sentence, the researcher was released. In detention for almost nine months, the young journalist was also due to reunite with his family this Tuesday, November 7 because his pretrial sentence exceeds his two sentences. However, by the evening, he had still not been released from prison. There is uncertainty but according to his lawyers, it seems that the Constantine court has decided to “cumulate the two convictions” of Mustapha Bendjama. He would then still have a little more than four months to spend in prison.