The Amira Bouraoui affair (Algeria Politics & Security – 14.02.23) is continuing to have damaging repercussions of their own making for both Algeria and Tunisia. Although it is President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s ongoing rants France that is likely to do the most damage, the affair has also shown Tunisia and its President Kaïs Saïed in a very disturbing light as little more than a puppet of the Algerian regime.

On 24 February, reportedly under pressure from Algiers, it sentenced Bouraoui, the dual Franco-Algerian national activist, in absentia to three months in prison for her illegal entry into Tunisia. Despite being banned from leaving Algeria she entered Tunisia on 3 February where she was arrested and placed in pre-trial detention until her appearance on 6 February before a judge who decided on her release, adjourning her case. Thanks to France’s consular intervention, she was finally able to board a flight to France despite a Tunisian attempt to deport her back to Algeria.

According to her lawyer Hashem Badra, she was convicted on 24 February in absentia of ‘illegal entry into Tunisia without a travel document.’ If Bouraoui returns to Tunisia she could challenge the judgment but she currently remains in France. A return to Tunisia would be very foolhardy considering Algiers’ strong influence over Tunisia’s increasingly authoritarian presidency.

A few days after the Bouraoui’s escape to France, several Tunisian journalists and opponents expressed their indignation at the Algiers’ untimely interventions in the country’s internal affairs. This angered the Algerian regime which told President Saïed to crack down on what it called these ‘lobbies’ which represented a threat to ‘Algerian-Tunisian brotherhood.’

The following day a trade union official, politicians, magistrates and a journalist were quickly arrested which led the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to denounce ‘the worsening of repression’ in Tunisia. Amongst those arrested was Noureddine Boutar, the owner of Tunisia’s very popular private Mosaïque FM radio station whose six other shareholders include former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s brother-in-law Belhassen Trabelsi. He had begun to develop a very critical discourse regarding Algeria’s influence on political life in Tunisia. Other domestic critics are denouncing the Algiers’ strong influence and are accusing Kaïs Saïed of allowing the country to become a laboratory for experimenting with Algeria’s repressive methods. 

The president was also condemned by a raft of domestic and international media and human rights organisations, Including the African Union Commission’s head, Moussa Faki Mahamat, for what have been described as his mind-blowing and racist diatribe against African migrants. His remarks have had widespread international repercussions, especially in France, where they have been seized upon by Eric Zemmour and other outspoken members of France’s extreme right wing.