Assault on Algerian journalist in Paris
In a video posted on his YouTube channel, controversial journalist Abderrahmane Semmar, better known as Abdou Semmar, describes an assassination attempt. A complaint was filed at the police station for "violence with use, threat of weapon and robbery with weapon".
He attributes this action to the Algerian regime, whose most bloodthirsty fringe he defends, in particular that of the General Directorate of Documentation and External Security and its "analysis and investigation service" led by General Hamid Oubelaïd, alias Hocine Boulahia, in charge of tracking down opponents in exile. His followers remember well his relentless defence of this bloodthirsty general, trying to prove that he had been admitted to retirement and no longer had any role in the secret services.
Even when this same general had remotely planned the attempted kidnapping and assassination of one of his colleagues, as the investigation by the Anti-Terrorist Sub-Directorate of the French Judicial Police in November 2022 showed, Abdou Semmar turned a deaf ear. He was unable to denounce such an enterprise involving Lotfi Nezzar, son of retired general Khaled Nezzar, with whom he has close ties.
Editor-in-chief of the Algérie Part news website, Abdou Semmar has even given the Algerian secret services a platform from which to attack journalists harassed by the Algiers authorities. The site is notable for the versatility of its editor-in-chief, who is the sole author of numerous articles commissioned by a section of the Algerian regime. It is also known for its provocations against certain businessmen or civil servants, asking them for financial compensation to stop their hostile campaigns against them.
This is the case of Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour, former CEO of the Algerian oil company SONATRACH, currently in prison, of whom he has become an ardent defender. A few months before his son Nazim came into contact with the journalist, the latter had criticised him. They became friends and no more hostile writings were written about Ould Kaddour, who was still at large.
The same happened with former businessman Mahieddine Tahkout, now in prison, whom Ould Kaddour extorted large sums of money and cars from while he was still in Algeria, and who benefited from his interventions with Algerian officials for various services, including the recovery of his driving licence, as revealed by a leak of some of their recorded conversations, published on the Internet. These recordings reveal the journalistic practices of Abdou Semmar, who wrote at the dictation of his financiers.
Abdou Semmar was involved in several quarrels between the wings of power, and in October 2018 he was targeted by the command of the national gendarmerie. This earned him a few weeks in jail. This was enough proof that he was being persecuted by the powers-that-be to apply for asylum in France. This right was granted in October 2019. However, at the time he applied for asylum, he was a staunch supporter of the late General GaÏd Salah, former chief of staff of the Algerian army. His defence of the military regime infuriated viewers of the AMEL TV channel, which has a reputation for anti-power and to which he was welcomed as soon as he arrived in France.
According to some of his journalist colleagues, Abdou Semmar's background hardly justifies an attack ordered by the Algiers regime. They classify it as a case of "settling scores" with businessmen who are victims of his blackmail. This is what happened a few weeks ago to one of his accomplices, Saïd Bensdira, the Algerian regime's media liaison based in England. We will return to this subject in a future issue.
This is a plausible theory insofar as Abdou Semmar has never attacked the Algerian regime head-on. To gain credibility when he defends it, he denounces businessmen and heads of state-owned companies and publishes detailed dossiers sent to him by the Algerian security services. This is why many observers claim that "Abdou Semmar is the only journalist in the world who publishes two or three investigations a day, with supporting documents, without leaving his home".
