Rabat – Guermit Bounouira, a former private secretary to the former chief of staff at the Algerian army Gaid Salah, has unveiled serious allegations linking high profile Algerian military officials, including army Chief of Staff Said Chengriha, to drug and arms trafficking.
Bounouira released the video from his prison cell in Blida, Algeria’s notoriously well-guarded and most surveilled prison for dissidents and political prisoners, where is detained over charges of corruption and treason, according to Algerie Part Plus.
The video gained traction online after former Algerian diplomat Mohamed Larbi Zitout shared with his social media followers.
The founder of Rachad, an Islamist political movement famous for its vehement denunciation of the Algerian political establishment, Zitout went into self-imposed exile in the UK when Algeria issued an arrest warrant against him in 2007.
In his video, Bounouira said some military officials in Algeria, including Chengriha,, benefited from large revenues from drug and arms trafficking.
He directly accused Chengriha of helping drug lords with networks operating at the Moroccan-Algerian borders to smuggle large quantities of drugs into Algeria.
According to Bounouira, the Algerian army’s chief of staff’s links to drug smuggling lasted from 2004 to 2018, when he was commanding Algeria’s third military region at the land border with Morocco.
Chengriha, who was operating in southwestern Algeria, reportedly invoked health concerns to plead with the private secretary of Gaid Salah to persuade the then army chief of staff to help him secure a senior posting in Algiers.
In 2018, Gaid Salah appointed Chengriha as a commander of land forces.
By 2019, however, Gaid Salah reportedly got wind of Chengriba’s involvement in drug and arms trafficking.
As this coincided with a nervous electoral period — Algeria held presidential elections on December 13, 2019 — Salah was reportedly only waiting for the uncertainty and political arms wrestling surrounding the 2019 elections to be over in order to make his move on Chengriha. But he died on December 23 of that year and was subsequently replaced by Chengriha as chief of staff of the Algerian army.
In addition to his involvement in drug smuggling, Chengriha was also trafficking arms from Libya, which he then used to promote false news of fabricated terrorist cells supposedly dismantled by the Algerian army, Bounouira alleged.
Toward the end of his video, Bounouira vowed to release a list of the names of all Algerian generals and other high-ranking officers involved in drug trafficking.
If confirmed, the allegations will create further controversy amid Algeria’s deepening cycle of socio-political crises. Citizens in Algeria have been protesting against military interference in political affairs since the start of the Hirak movement in February 2019.
As the severe accusations now hovering over the career of many high-profile Algerian officers and the very legacy of the Algerian People’s National Army, it remains to be seen whether this controversial episode will encourage more Algerian politicians to act toward ending the army’s political tutelage over other institutions in the country.
