opponent Amira Bouraoui denounces a “political trial” after her conviction

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”immediately reacted the Franco-Algerian opponent to World.

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 convicted in this case for complicity and “smuggling of migrants” : his mother Khadija Bourdjia, 71 years old, one year suspended sentence; 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 transported me 500 meters between the house and the taxi station because I had a suitcase, my mother’s fault was that I took her passport. The policeman and the driver did nothing. And Mustapha Bendjema never helped meassures 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 folder was empty. The Bouraoui affair was no longer in the news, this trial did not interest Algerian public opinion. »

Serial affairs

An indifference which contrasts with the controversy and diplomatic tensions which had 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 World, 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” of the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE), as indicated by the official press, but from 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 projects in advance. and, therefore, of having helped her to leave the country. His defenders insist on the total absence of material evidence to support these accusations.

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This young reporter, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper The Provincial in Annaba, has for years been in the sights of the authorities for its investigations into the murky links between the political and business worlds, pro-Hirak coverage (the ” movement “ popular 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 in prison, 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 M^me Bouraoui, that justice has decided to open another legal file for “publishing classified information on the Internet” 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 preventive sentence exceeds his two sentences. However, in the evening he was still not released from prison. There is uncertainty but according to his lawyers, it seems that the Constantine court has decided to “combine the two convictions” by Mustapha Bendjama. He would then still have a little more than four months to spend in prison.