From The Memory File To The Extradition Of Wanted Persons, Paris Is Flirting With Algeria

Flirtation messages continue between the Algerian and French authorities on more than one level, and the last message sent by Paris to Algeria was to activate the extradition law between the two countries, which was issued in the Official Gazette.

This agreement was signed on January 27, 2019, by the former Minister of Justice, Tayeb Louh, on the Algerian side, and on the French side, the former Justice Minister, Nicole Belloubet, but the implementation of this agreement was delayed by more than two years.

The activation of the agreement on the French side coincided with the same day that the Public Prosecutor at Algiers Bir Mourad Rais court requested the issuance of an international arrest warrant against several wanted Algerians abroad, including those on French soil.

The French move is the third decision made by Paris, related to Algeria this month, although the first and second steps are related to memory, and was represented in the recognition of the French President, Emmanuel Macron, of the responsibility of the French state in the killing of the lawyer of the National Liberation Front, Ali Boumendjel, then the declassification of the Algerian archive, which was smuggled to France since fifty years ago.

However, the French steps do not mean that they have removed the clouds that still cloud the sky of bilateral relationships, especially those related to memory. The General Manager of the National Archives and the Chancellor of the Presidency of the Republic, in charge of memory, Abdelmadjid Chikhi, has not stopped for a while from sending encrypted messages to France, which show that all that Paris has provided so far in terms of memory, remains far from the aspirations of the official and popular circles in the former colony.

What Chikhi said commenting on the report of the historian Benjamin Stora, which he submitted to the French president on January 20, does not concern Algeria, because it is a “French-French bilateral relationship” as long as it did not reach Algeria in an official capacity.

Chikhi refused even to evaluate the report of the French historian, when he said, “I do not have an evaluation of Stora’s report because I consider this report a French report that the French head of state requested from one of his citizens to give him an opinion on what he calls calming thoughts or calming the memory”.

The Chancellor’s statement at the Presidency coincided with an investigation prepared by the British newspaper, The Independent, on the French nuclear tests in Algeria, through which it concluded by saying that the French authorities, despite their enactment of the Morin Law, which legislated compensation for the victims of these criminal explosions, but they were not sincere to compensate the victims of those crimes.

The British newspaper said that “the French nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara are dangerous and have a great degree of spread, but only 53 compensation requests have been filed.” The reason is the complications included in the Morin Law, which was enacted to deprive the victims of their right to compensation.