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Rabat – Algeria’s government has announced its decision to recall its ambassador to France for immediate consultation.
The office of the Algerian presidency announced the news today in a communique, with the decision coming in the aftermath of reports that France helped and supported the French-Algerian activist,Amira Bouraoui, as she faced issues with the Algerian government.
Reports suggest Bouraoui arrived in France on Monday after she received consular assistance from French diplomats in Tunisia. The support helped her escape extradition to Algeria as she left the Tunisian territory on February 6 to travel to the French city of Lyon.
AFP quoted the activist’s Tunisian lawyer, Hashem Badra, as saying: “She is free and in good health.”
Her French lawyer Francois Zimeray also celebrated her freedom, welcoming France’s mobilization of its diplomats in Tunis to help Bouraoui escape extradition to Algeria.
Tunisian authorities arrested the Algerian activist on February 3 when she was trying to take a flight for France with her French passport, Badra said. Converging reports suggested she was arrested for “illegally entering Tunisia.”
A prominent opposition public figure during the reign of former Algerian president abdelaziz Bouteflika, Bouraoui has remained a vocal critic of the Algerian regime in recent years.
“My client was the subject of an attempted kidnapping and sequestration by certain authorities responsible for law enforcement in Tunisia at the request of the Algerian authorities,” Zimeray said.
Algeria today commented on France’s involvement in Bouraoui’s escape from Tunisia, describing Paris’s decision to help the activist as unacceptable.
Algeria’s frustration with France comes only a few weeks after the two countries showed signs of ongoing consultations to mend their historically strained diplomatic ties.
In August 2022, the two countries negotiated an increase in the delivery of Algerian gas to France.
“They are considering an increase of 50% in the volume of Algerian exports. Algeria’s share currently represents between 8% and 9% of all gas supplied to France,” Le Monde wrote then.
As Europe reels from its sanctions on Russian energy exports, Paris has recently gone to great lengths to appease the Algerian regime, France has appeared to be courting access to Algerian gas.
But Algeria’s displeasure with French diplomats’ assistance to Bouraoui might considerably reverse the progress Algiers and Paris have apparently made towards boosting bilateral cooperation.
