The name of Amira Bouraoui has thrown a cloud over the good relations between France and Algeria. The plane carrying the Franco-Algerian journalist and activist landed in Paris this week from Tunis. She had spent three days there in pre-trial detention awaiting trial for illegally crossing the border into Algeria, from where she had fled for fear of being arrested amid a campaign of persecution once morest the press. independent, which saw the arrest of two prominent independent journalists, Ihsane El Kadi and Saad Bouakaba.
Bouraoui, a fierce opponent of the Algerian regime, was finally released following testifying in court. The magistrate decided to postpone her case to February 23, but, according to her defence, two officers immediately took her out of the magistrate’s office. Deportation to Algeria was still on the table, but the protection of the French diplomatic corps stopped the measure in extremis. The pressure exerted by Paris on President Kais Saïed and the rest of the administration has borne fruit.
First, the journalist was transferred to the French Embassy in Tunis. Then, they snatched permission from Saïed to take the flight to Paris. His lawyer, Hachem Badra, later explained to the daily Le Monde that Bouraoui’s fate was pending during those hours. “I am more than satisfied with this happy outcome, in which I had stopped believing,” admitted the Tunisian lawyer, telling the media that he is “free and in good health”. The intervention of the French state tipped the scales.
This is not the first time that the name of Amira Bouraoui has been put forward. The 46-year-old gynecologist, who describes herself as an “outraged citizen and daughter of a senior army officer”, rose to prominence in opposition circles to the regime of the late Abdelaziz Bouteflika on the Facebook social network. Along with other dissident profiles, he led the Barakat (Basta, in English) movement, a social protest that erupted in opposition to a fourth presidential term for Bouteflika.
Bouraoui was an active participant in the Hirak (movement) protests, which erupted four years ago to force Mr. Bouteflika to resign to run for a fifth term. Although she spent months in prison following being convicted on several counts, including “offending” Islam for her Facebook posts. She was released in July 2020, but under a travel ban. She has, however, tried several times to visit her son, who lives in France. But without success. Since September, she has presented a weekly political program on the private radio station Radio M, whose director is Ihsane El Kadi.
The journalist has dual nationality. This is precisely what allowed him to pass under the radar of the Algerian authorities and avoid deportation to Tunisia. France’s intervention was decisive in preventing Bouraoui from following in the footsteps of some of his colleagues who risk long prison terms in Algeria because of the serious legal proceedings initiated by the regime once morest the independent press.
