Algeria ordered a dozen French officials out of the country within 48 hours, raising diplomatic tensions between the two countries.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Monday that this expulsion is related to the recent arrest in France of three Algerian citizens who are suspected of abducting a well-known Algerian critic of the government last year.
Barrot called on Algerian authorities to reverse their decision, threatening that if they go ahead with the expulsions, France will be forced to react promptly. The group to be expelled includes officials of the French Ministry of the Interior, according to a diplomatic source quoted by AFP.
This diplomatic strain comes after French prosecutors indicted three Algerians, including a consular agent, for their involvement in the alleged kidnapping of Amir Boukhors, a social media influencer with more than one million followers on TikTok. The suspects have been taken into pre-trial custody and charged with terrorism-related conspiracy.
Boukhors, who had been granted asylum in France in 2023, was kidnapped in a suburb of Paris last April but released after a day, according to his attorney. Algeria is demanding his extradition to stand trial, having issued nine international warrants for his arrest on charges of terrorism and fraud.
This new diplomatic crisis risks undermining the efforts of recent months to repair French-Algerian relations. Only last week, Barrot traveled to Algeria to repair relations that had deteriorated in light of several political issues. In July last year, French President Emmanuel Macron’s approval of a Western Sahara autonomy plan under Moroccan control incensed Algeria.
Strains escalated last month when an Algerian court convicted French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal of five years in prison on charges of having undermined national unity, and Macron demanded his release.
The French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs reported that if Algeria goes ahead with the expulsions, it would be the first time since Algeria’s independence in 1962 that French diplomats have been expelled from the country.
