“Le Monde” Recognized Its Mistake, Apologized Twice to President Bouteflika

Official documents revealed that the issue of withdrawing the visa of a journalist who work for “Le Monde” newspaper and preventing him from entering the Algerian territory in the delegation that accompanied the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, in his visit to Algeria, is not related to a revenge act against the newspaper’s management, but the French newspaper’s General Manager admitted the error and apologized twice, in a correspondence to Algeria Ambassador to France, Ammar Ben Djamaa.

According to the correspondence that was signed by the GM of “Le Monde”, which was sent to the Algerian ambassador to Paris, on April 7, I.e on last Thursday, one day after the Foreign Minister, Ramtane Lamamra, summoned the French Ambassador, Bernard Emié.

Contrary to the explanations that were given by the ambassador about the campaign against Algeria and its institutions, and involving the image of the President Bouteflika in the “Panama papers”, the newspaper’s management recognized its mistake and wrote to the ambassador; “We offer our apologies to the President of the Republic on the error and the damage against his person, by using his image, although his name was not among the names of the involved in the Panama Peppers issue”.

Owner of correspondence asserted that this apology is the second of its kind since the issuance of the number that raised the official protest of Algeria.

Senior diplomatic sources indicated that an apology is the subject of correspondence, and it is evidence that the Algerian diplomacy in Paris did not revenge the newspaper “Le Monde” by pulling the visa of its journalist, but the argument of Algeria and the reasons for its refusal to enable the journalist to get a visa is another subject that is largest and most dangerous than a professional misconduct that was committed by the newspaper through putting the image of a President who has nothing to do with the case, within the pictures of leaders and other heads who are named in what was termed as the “Panama papers.”

Echorouk sources refuse to revealed the real reasons for the withdrawal of Le Monde journalist’s visa, which was made by the newspaper as an issue and other French media came to its line in a solidarity campaign to boycott the coverage of Valls visit to Algeria, at a time when the Aurassi hotel noticed the presence of large French media that arrived before Valls to cover the third session of the Algeria-French Intergovernmental Committee.