Two Algerian ‘influencers’ who incited attacks in the country are arrested in France: “Shoot them, we will bury you”

On Friday, French authorities arrested an ‘influencer’ in the city of Brest Algerian who had repeatedly launched calls to use violence against anyone who opposes the Algerian regime. “Shoot them, we will bury them with the Jews,” he pointed out to the camera. Hours later, another second ‘influencer’ of the same nationality was arrested for death threats on French soil.

The French Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, announced on his X account the arrest of ‘Zazouyoussef’ and ‘Imadtintin’, active on social networks such as TikTok. Retailleau stressed that the first of them “who called on his community to commit attacks in France, will have to respond to justice for his actions.” As for the second, he noted that “he will also have to answer in court for the vile comments made on TikTok. Let’s not let anything go.”

France and Algeria are currently experiencing a phase of strong diplomatic tensionsespecially after French President Emmanuel Macron said on July 30 that the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara is “the only basis” for a solution to the crisis in which it has been mired for half a century. the former Spanish colony.

According to the local press, ‘Zazouyoussef’ – 25 years old – had an expulsion order pending from France since last April, where he had been convicted of participating in riots after the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old French-Algerian young man, who was shot by a police officer during a car chase in the city of Nanterre, near Paris, in June 2023.

The influencer, who has more than 400,000 subscribers on TikTok, had launched calls in recent days to violently attack anyone who expresses opposition to the regime of the Algerian president, Abdelmajid Tebboune.

His TikTok account was deleted on Thursday after the allegedly criminal nature of some of those videos, reported on the Boulevard Voltaire website, had been pointed out.

“Shoot them, we will bury them with the Jews”pointed out in one of them in front of the camera in Arabic in a message in which he made some allusions to the civil war in Algeria: “We are going to do to you like in the 1990s. We are going to shoot you (…) Do you want to go out on January 1? Shoot them, the gunpowder has to speak. Shoot them, President Tebboune, they seek chaos.”

Last Sunday, the Algerian president, Abdelmajid Tebbounecharged harshly against France especially for Paris’ position in favor of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

He also criticized France for “having left havoc” during the 132 years it was colonizing Algeria and demanded that Paris clean up the “nuclear waste” it left in the Algerian Sahara during the tests it carried out there during that colonial period.