Algeria’s government has summoned the French ambassador to Algiers, Stephane Romatet, over alleged efforts by France’s spy agency to destabilize the North African country, local media reported at the weekend, citing diplomatic sources.
The move came a day after it was revealed that the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) is seeking to recruit former terrorists for the purposes of destabilizing Algeria, according to state-owned daily El Moudjahid.
The Algerian Foreign Ministry expressed the government’s “firm disapproval” of the “numerous French provocations and hostile acts toward Algeria” when it summoned Romatet last week, the outlet reported on Saturday.
“Algeria stressed that these provocative actions would not pass without an appropriate response,” it quoted diplomatic sources as saying.
Le Soir d’Algerie newspaper also reported on Sunday that French diplomats and agents had organized a series of meetings with people showing a “declared and permanent hostility toward Algerian institutions.”
Algeria was under French rule for 132 years before gaining independence in 1962. Fragile relations between Paris and Algiers have deteriorated in recent months after French President Emmanuel Macron reversed his country’s decades-long diplomatic stance and endorsed a controversial Moroccan autonomy plan for the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
Algiers, which backs the Polisario Front, a separatist group demanding self-determination for the Sahrawi people, said Macron’s decision violates international law and UN efforts to “complete the decolonization” of the former Spanish colony. In response, the former French colony recalled its ambassador to Paris.
In October, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune canceled a long-delayed official visit to France amid the feud and accused Paris of colonial-era “genocide.”
The latest tensions between Algiers and Paris come as French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal is reportedly detained in Algeria for “attacking territorial integrity.” According to the Paris-based newspaper Le Monde, the award-winning novelist’s arrest in Algiers last month might be linked to his comments on a far-right French media outlet in which he repeated Morocco’s claims that its territory was truncated in favor of Algeria during colonial rule.
In August, Algeria’s Defense Ministry announced it had arrested 21 people for attempting to smuggle weapons into the country aboard a commercial ferry from France. The ministry said the suspects are affiliated with the Algerian terrorist organization MAK (Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie).
In a report on Saturday, the El Moudjahid newspaper claimed Paris “actively protects and supports” MAK and another group, the Islamist movement Rachad, which the government designated as terrorist organizations in 2021.