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Rabat – France announced on Thursday the arrest of a new Algerian influencer, identified as Mahdi B.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau announced that police arrested the influencer on Tuesday for a video in which he allegedly showed intent to carry out violent actions in France.
French authorities have been cracking down on Algerian influencers for sharing contentious content that allegedly called for violence.
The crackdown comes amid escalating tensions between France and Algeria, with the two countries frequently responding to each others’ hostile statements and remarks.
Earlier this month, Retailleau said France had reached an “extremely concerning threshold with Algeria.” The French government cannot “tolerate this situation,” he vowed, accusing Algeria’s regime of attempting to humiliate France.
As the bilateral tensions reached an unprecedented low in the past week, French Minister of Justice Gerald Darmanin said he wanted to eliminate the French-Algerian agreement that allowed Algerian officials to travel to France without a visa.
“Leaders, or most of the Algerian leaders who are in decision-making positions of humiliation … seems more intelligent, more effective, and it can be done very quickly,” he said.
The accusations came after Algeria rejected to receive one of the influencers that France deported to Algiers recently.
Read also: Algeria Threatens to Sanction France over Its New Position on Western Sahara
On Thursday, the French interior minister said the hostility of Algeria towards France “took a very aggressive form with the unacceptable detention of Boualem Sansal.”
Algerian police arrested the author last year.
Sansal has been a vocal critic of Algeria’s leadership. Police arrested him at Algiers airport and charged him with “threatening state security” for his caustic criticism of the Algerian regime.
Al24 News, an Algerian news outlet, has described Paris’s strongly worded responses to perceived Algerian provocation as a “disinformation” campaign against the North African country by allegedly extremist and racist “far-right factions in France” seeking to irreparably damage historical ties between Algiers and Paris.
According to the Algerian news outlet, this “prompted various fractions within the French political landscape, with many condemning the ongoing attacks against Algerians.”
