[Salon] Le Pouvoir and the Hirak: revenge served cold - ArabDigest.org Guest Post

[Salon] Le Pouvoir and the Hirak: revenge served cold - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail Le Pouvoir and the Hirak: revenge served cold Summary: having defeated the Hirak the Algerian regime has turned its attention to opposition members who escaped the counter revolution and are now living abroad. In February 2019 peaceful weekly protests known as the “Hirak” swept Algeria and millions marched through the streets of major cities and smaller towns demanding basic rights and freedoms in a challenge to Le Pouvoir, the cabal of military and security elites that run the country. By 2022 however it had become clear that the revolution had failed, stalled by the Coronavirus pandemic as well as constant harassment and arrests by the security services. Since then the regime has been on the offensive targeting human rights activists, academics and journalists as well as anyone else perceived to have had a leading role in the Hirak. Inside Algeria, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has been pursuing "justice by telephone", handing down sentences and legal decisions from on high to the corrupt judicial apparatus that has already seen around three hundred activists and protesters detained in a pseudo-anti-terrorist campaign because of their support for the Hirak or because they spoke up in solidarity with the detainees or against human rights abuses. Many detainees are held in pretrial detention for unjustified long periods of time, while others have been sentenced to harsh sentences under problematic articles in the Penal Code such as harming the national security or interest, undermining national unity, offending public officials, incitement, spreading fake news and terrorism. Several organisations that supported the Hirak have also been banned, including the Youth Action Rally (RAJ), the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH) and two opposition parties, the Socialist Workers’ Party (PST) and the Democratic and Social Movement (MDS). With the internal opposition now under control the regime has been turning its attention to opposition members who escaped and are now living abroad. Algeria's political isolation means that although the regime is no less vindictive than any other Arab regime, it does not have such a free hand when it comes to dispatching émigré dissidents in West as does, for example, Saudi Arabia. At the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by a Saudi death squad called the Tiger Team. Nevertheless Algeria’s Direction de la Documentation et de la Sécurité Extérieure (DDSE), one of the three branches of the powerful intelligence services, devotes enormous resources to monitoring political opponents abroad. Top of its most wanted list are the leaders of the principal exiled Algerian political opposition organisations: Rachad, an Islamist political movement founded in 2007 that "intends to work for the establishment of a rule of law governed by democratic principles and good governance" and the Mouvement pour l'Autodétermination de la Kabylie (MAK), a separatist movement founded in 2002 demanding the independence of provinces inhabited by Berbers in eastern Algeria. Both groups operate openly in exile. Last year MAK met US lawmakers after recruiting Elisabeth Myers, an American lawyer, as its lobbyist in Washington and thousands of its supporters demonstrate on a weekly basis in the streets of Paris and other French cities. Ten days ago MAK’s leader Ferhat Mehenni proclaimed the rebirth of the Kabyle state to his supporters at the foot of the skyscraper housing the UN headquarters in New York. MAK leader Ferhat Mehenni speaking outside the UN headquarters in New York on April 20, 2024 [photo credit: TikTok] In January 2022 French journalist Nicholas Beau reported on how the DDSE had set up a secret cell with a mandate to carry out covert operations and executions of Algerian dissidents and political opponents living in the European diaspora. Two men were reportedly behind it: Abdelkader Tigha, a former non-commissioned officer in the Algerian secret services living in exile in Belgium and Colonel Hocine Abdelhamid, aka Boulahya ("the bearded one"), deputy head of the DDSE and a former officer in the death squads during the “Années de Plomb” which ran from 1992 until 2002. After a promising start Beau reported that collaboration between the two men broke down after Tigha realised his role was to be trapping and assassinating dissidents in Europe. He then turned double agent and began monetising the information he had collected from the Bearded One by tipping off his would-be targets and sharing other DDSE dirty laundry on the internet with help from Hicham Aboud, a former Algerian army officer turned prominent opposition journalist who runs a You Tube channel with 685,000 followers from his home in Roubaix, northern France. The regime also targets dissidents through diplomatic and legal channels. One such case is that of former army corporal Mohamed Benhalima who had been sentenced to death in absentia in Algeria for espionage and desertion and was refouled from Spain in March 2022. He had fled there in 2019 fearing reprisals after participating in the Hirak and ran a YouTube channel denouncing military officials before he was returned without due process or evaluation of his asylum claim. In 2021, Mohamed Larbi Zitout, a former Algerian diplomat turned YouTuber and one of the founders and leaders of Rachad who now lives in the UK announced that the British authorities had warned him that he should leave his home immediately as they had information about "an imminent threat to his life". Slimane Bouhafs, an advocate for the rights of Algeria’s Kabyle population and an officially recognised UN refugee was kidnapped on August 25, 2021 from his home in Tunis. Four days later he surfaced in police custody in Algiers and was put on trial for terrorism. He had previously served 18 months in prison for “insulting Islam.” Another prominent dissident who was targeted by the regime abroad is the French-Algerian activist Amira Bouraoui. She was sentenced to two years in prison for "offending Islam" and "attacking the person of the President of the Republic" as well as being banned from travel but she managed to escape by crossing illegally into neighbouring Tunisia using her French passport. In February 2023 she was arrested in Tunisia and faced deportation to Algeria but was allowed to leave for France instead, sparking a diplomatic incident. Algeria accused France of assisting her "clandestine and illegal exfiltration" via Tunisia and recalled its ambassador in Paris. Two of her family members were subsequently arrested, Amira's sister Wafa Bouraoui was detained a few hours after she messaged her more than 19,000 followers on Facebook that the family house was under siege; Amira’s 73 year old mother Khadidja Bouraoui was held in custody for a week. Reports continue to circulate that the Algerian regime is running an active clandestine external intelligence campaign that systematically targets dissidents and defectors living in the West, following in the footsteps of the Saudis, Libyans and others. Some say Algerian dissidents have recently been subjected to kidnap and extraordinary rendition back to Algeria from France. Such stories seem plausible but hard to prove because the DDSE are more professional than the Saudi Tiger team and French authorities would always seek to cover up these sorts of operations just as they covered up and then dropped the police investigations into the seizure of the two dissident Saudi Princes Saud bin Saif Al Nasr and Prince Sultan bin Turki who were kidnapped from Paris in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Algerian dissidents would be well advised to continue to take full security precautions.