Algerian regime attacks families of political exiles
At 5am on Sunday 13 August, a squad of about twenty men in balaclavas burst into the home of hadj Mabrouk ABDELMALEK, a 90-year-old veteran of the war of liberation. Their orders were to search the home of this peaceful family who had given so much for the liberation of Algeria during the hard years of the armed struggle.
According to sources close to the gendarmerie brigade in Chréa (Tébessa wilaya in eastern Algeria), the search was negative, with no weapons or drugs found. The squad of the Rapid Intervention Squad (GIR) of the gendarmerie left the place, taking with them two of ABDELMALEK's sons, their computers, mobile phones and wifi router.
This incursion by the gendarmes caused the whole family and the neighbours to be disconcerted. The mother of the two sons arrested (Adel, 36, and Azzedine, 39), who suffers from several chronic illnesses, fainted. The father, who is hard of hearing and very ill, was stunned by what had happened to him. The last time he had been arrested by French gendarmes was in 1957, during the war of liberation. The arrest was less brutal than the one on this hot Sunday, 13 August.
A few minutes later and a handful of kilometres away, the same men arrived at the house of Ahmed, the elder brother. They arrested him in turn and took him away without his understanding why he had been taken to the police station.
The news quickly spread online and was relayed on social media and the London-based satellite channel Al-Magharibia. Nouar Abdelmalek, better known as Anwar Malek, raised the alarm. A political refugee in France since 2005 and a former officer in the Algerian army during the bloody years, he suffered the worst atrocities of torture for attempting to defect in protest against abuses by a military command completely detached from the troops. After a stay in the Blida military prison, he reoffended and succeeded in his desertion by clandestinely leaving Algerian territory across the Algerian-Tunisian land border.
Once he was granted asylum in France, he distinguished himself by his intense activity in the field of press and human rights. He was part of the Arab League observer group that went to monitor the situation in Syria. He denounced the delegation's bias in favour of Arab regimes supporting Bashar Al-Assad, the leader in Damascus.
From France, he became editor-in-chief of the Arabic-language daily Jaridati, after contributing to various publications and publishing five books in Arabic.
His activities in the media and publishing did not distract him from his main objective, which was to denounce human rights violations in Algeria. With the help of the Geneva-based organisation Al-Karama, he filed a complaint in 2008 through TRIAL International, a Swiss NGO created in 2002 and based in Geneva. Its main objective is to fight against impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and enforced disappearances.
In 2013, Anwar Malek presented a strong and well-founded case, with medical expertise certificates to back him up, and the UN Human Rights Council ordered the Algerian government to compensate him for physical and moral damages and to open an investigation in Algeria into the abuses he had suffered.
Although he has not been convicted for any of his activities by the current Algerian regime and is not on the list of political activists and journalists classified as terrorists, Anwar Malek remains in Algiers' crosshairs. Now it is his family who pays the price for his activism.
Long before last Sunday's gendarme raid, two of his brothers were expelled from the ranks of the Algerian army without right. After so many years of loyal service, they find themselves on the street. Without any rights. Without even social security. They were expelled on 5 July, the 60th anniversary of independence. What a gift for their father, who fought so hard for independence. Today they are at the bottom of a gendarmerie cell paying for the activism of their elder brother, Nouar.
Attack on influencer Amir DZ's mother
Long before Anwar Malek's family, yours truly was the first to see his family suffer the horrors of heavy-handed arrests by police ninjas in 2013. That was in Bouteflika's time. And under the same Bouteflika, Amir Boukhors' brother, better known under the pseudonym Amir Dz, was brought back from his remote home village in the west of the country in October 2018 for a sordid affair he didn't even know the ins and outs of. He is serving a few months in prison without trial.
Two days ago, it was Amir DZ's mother's turn to watch a horde of thugs break into her modest home. Thugs sent by the General Directorate of Internal Security to terrorise a defenceless and isolated woman.
The same thing happened to another activist, Mohamed Larbi Zitoute, who lives in London, where he runs a bakery and pastry shop. This former diplomat, who felt threatened if he returned to Algeria after three years as a diplomat in Tripoli (Libya), is known for his intense activity on YouTube, denouncing the regime in Algiers on a daily basis. His brother Abderrahmane, who remained in Algeria, is currently behind bars in an Algiers prison. His only crime is that he is the brother of Larbi Zitoute. Having acquired British nationality, Larbi Zitoute is beyond the reach of the Algerian authorities, and their international arrest warrants have no effect on him. So they targeted his family.
The same goes for the leaders of the MAK (Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia), whose closest relatives are in prison or, at best, under a ban on leaving the country and under judicial surveillance.
The Algerian regime, which prides itself on being the largest shock force in the region and on the African continent, never ceases to demonstrate its feverishness in the face of exiled ordinary citizens, whose only weapon is a YouTube channel and their unwavering determination to denounce the misdeeds of a power that has transformed a country rich in oil and with immense natural resources into an immense prison that the most daring men, women and children do not hesitate to leave in makeshift boats at the risk of their lives.