Power struggles in Algeria

There is still time before Algeria's presidential elections scheduled for December 2024, but power struggles have already begun. On one side are Boualem Boualem, a powerful and influential adviser to Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, as well as Farid Zinedine Bencheikh, head of the Algerian police, and Lieutenant General Ben Ali, head of the Republican Guard. The other faction is represented by several senior military figures, including Said Chengriha, chief of staff of the Algerian army, General Yahia Ali Oulhadj, head of the National Gendarmerie, and Major General M'henna Djebbar, head of Algerian foreign intelligence.

Maghreb Intelligence has exposed this division as "a new clan war" that is "tearing the Algerian regime apart from within". According to the portal, Boualem Boualem has launched an "unprecedented" offensive against the opposing faction, "violently" attacking its network of sources, collaborators and contacts.

Said Bensedira, close to Chengriha's military circles, is one of the main targets of Tebboune's adviser. The Algerian authorities on Boualem Boualem's side managed to get hold of Bensedira's mobile phone in order to obtain his list of contacts, which includes several foreign military and intelligence officers.

All of them were banned from leaving the country and judicial investigations were opened against them. Boualem Boualem also called for the arrest and imprisonment of Bensedira's brother, who lives in an Algerian town in the interior of the country. Lotfi Nezzar, son of the famous General Khaled Nezzar, head of the Algerian army in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was also blacklisted, according to Maghreb Intelligence.

The portal also claims that Boualem Boualem will present Tebboune - now on official travel abroad - with hard evidence of a military-orchestrated "plot" against the government to obtain permission to arrest Nezzar and other senior military figures in order to weaken the rival faction led by Chengriha.