A Tunisian Court Summons The Families of Algerian Illegal Migrants

The families of Algerian illegal immigrants missing for years on the Tunisian coasts have received official summons to appear tomorrow, Friday, before the Tunisian justice, which will look into the file of the case of the disappearance of 39 Algerian youths off the Tunisian coast.

According to Echorouk sources, the Judicial Mandates Squad of the Judicial Police Department of Annaba State Security (eastern Algeria) informed, early this week, the families of the disappeared youth that they were summoned to attend tomorrow, Friday, April 15th, to the Court of First Instance in El Kef, Tunisia, to follow up on the proceedings of the session on the disappearance of 39 Algerian youths on the Tunisian coasts, as no information has emerged about them since they sailed for illegal immigration that took off from one of the beaches on the coast of Annaba, towards the other side of the Mediterranean.

The families and relatives of the disappeared, most of whom are from Annaba and some neighbouring states, had for many years confirmed the presence of their missing sons in Tunisian prisons and insisted that they were arrested by members of the Tunisian Coast Guard after their boats ran aground and entered Tunisian territorial waters by error, which the Tunisian authorities have always denied, and confirms that there are no Algerians in Tunisian prisons. However, the families, in all their protests organized over the years, affirmed that they possessed testimonies and evidence to prove their allegations, and efforts were made over the years to raise the families’ concerns to the various parties and authorities concerned with the file of this case in Algeria and Tunisia.

It should be noted that recent years have witnessed, before the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, the disappearance of many Algerian illegal immigrants at sea, before their bodies appeared on some Tunisian coasts, similar to the group of illegal migrants who sailed in February 2020 from the Chetiabi beach of Annaba, with 14 young men on board of a rubber boat, then a young man from the city of Guelma and four others from the municipality of Chetaibi, all drowned at sea before the bodies of some of them appeared on the Tunisian coasts and transported them for burial in Algerian lands.