Respondent to a question of TV5 Monde journalist Mohamed Kaci on her decision to flee Algeria, Amira Bouraoui said that she “believes that the ban on leaving Algerian territory was illegalbecause the Algerian Constitution stipulates that we can only be under ISTN (ban on leaving the national territory) for three months, renewable only once, and that this ban had lasted for years”.
“The first time I tried to travel following the Hirak in 2019 was on November 12, 2021. There was no ban issued by the courts. Upon arriving at the airport, an agent from the border police asked me to go home, telling me that I might not travel”, testifies Amira Bouraoui.
She then wrote to the public prosecutor to ask him to lift this ban, but did not obtain an answer despite reminders from his lawyers.
The activist then decides to leave Algeria illegally to reach Tunisia by crossing “normally the land border, without being noticed”. She claims to have done it alone and specifies that “the journalist who was accused of [l]”having helped, Mustapha Bendjama, did not do it”. And to add: “Nobody knew regarding it, I didn’t bribe anyone.”
“When I left the court, I was kidnapped by two agents who took my passport”
She then attempted to board a Tunis-Paris flight, but was arrested and detained on the grounds that she had no no evidence justifying his entry into Tunisian territory.
After three days of detention, the judge releases her and announces that she will rule on her case on February 23. “When I left the court, I was kidnapped by two agents who took my passport and I was locked up at the General Directorate of the Border Police”, she continues.
Fearing that she would be deported to Algeria, her lawyer alerted the media. “That’s when the French consul in Tunis intervened to free me,” said Amira Bouraoui. “France is not guilty of any clandestine exfiltration operation,” she maintains.
After the consul’s intervention, she was released and the Tunisian authorities granted her permission to travel.
“The pressure I was under in Algeria lasted for years. This pressure made me decide to leave for more peace of mind,” she confides before concluding: “I hope to be able to return to Algeria one day. It’s also my country.”
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