Tension between Algeria and France flares up amid tit-for-tat expulsions
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Algerian consular official arrested in France for alleged complicity in abduction in new blow after months-long diplomatic dispute
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Middle East Eye
05-05-2025
- Middle East Eye
Algeria jails historian who called Amazigh identity a 'French-Zionist' construct
Algeria has imprisoned a prominent historian after he claimed that the Amazigh identity was a "French-Zionist" construct on Emirati TV. Mohamed Amine Belghit was remanded in custody after making the comments against the Algerian minority group last week, with the state prosecutor saying he had undermined the "unity" of the country. The Prosecutor's Office of the Dar El Beida court said in a statement on Saturday that Belghit had been arrested for: "The crime of undermining national unity by an act targeting national unity with the aim of undermining the symbols of the nation and the republic, the offense of undermining the integrity of national unity, and the offense of disseminating hate speech and discrimination." Belghit, a university professor who is known for making provocative public comments, had been speaking on Sky News Arabia when he declared that "the Amazigh language is an ideological project of French-Zionist creation". "There is no such thing as Amazigh culture. There is no such thing as Amazighness," he said. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters His comments, which spread quickly online, provoked outcry in Algeria, which recognised the Tamazight language as a national language in 2016. State television called the broadcast "a new form of venom, filth, indecency and insults against Algerians" while the High Commission for Amazighness said "isolated parties" were trying to destabilise Algeria. The national news outlet also said the UAE had "crossed all red lines" with the broadcast and denounced the country as an 'artificial mini-state". Algeria's Sahel neighbours withdraw ambassadors after shooting down of Malian drone Read More » Amazighs, who are also sometimes known as Berbers, are an ethnic group scattered across Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya whose roots in the region predate the Arab conquest of North Africa. They are believed to account for about 20 percent of Algeria's 44 million population. Amazigh culture and language have historically been suppressed by the Algerian government, but following pressure from protesters and campaigners, there has been increasing recognition of the minority's rights and identity in the country. "Yennayer," the Amazigh New Year, was added to the list of national holidays in 2017. The controversy has come against the backdrop of mounting tensions between Algeria and the UAE. The UAE and Algeria's other regional rival, Morocco, both agreed to recognise Israel in 2021, a move that was strongly criticised by the Algerian government. Authorities have also attacked the UAE's involvement in a range of regional conflicts, including the wars in Sudan and Libya, and have suspected the UAE of seeking to destabilise neighbouring Tunisia after the 2011 democratic revolution. 'Wherever there are conflicts, the state's money is present in Mali, Libya, Sudan,' President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said in March 2024.
Gulf Today
24-04-2025
- Gulf Today
Speech under siege
Last week articles appeared in The Washington Post and The Guardian by Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate arrested without producing a warrant by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents intent on his deportation. He wrote from a detention facility in Louisiana far from his wife Noor Abdalla, a US citizen who is about to deliver their first child. For company he has dozens of others who have been held for weeks and months without legal hearings until they could be deported. His nightmare began on March 8, when he was accosted, handcuffed, and forced into an unmarked car as he and his wife were returning home from dinner. When the couple protested, the arresting officers threatened to detain her as well. He was held in two facilities in New Jersey, where he and his wife dwell, before being sent to distant Louisiana. In The Guardian, Khalil wrote, 'My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and the end to the Genocide in Gaza.' This resumed when Israel broke the two-month ceasefire on March 18, 10 days after his detention. While no criminal charges have been levelled against Khalil, his incarceration and potential deportation come under a 1952 act which gives the secretary of state the authority to remove people whose presence in the US could have, in incumbent Marco Rubio's determination, 'adverse foreign policy consequence.' On April 11, a Louisiana judge decided Khalil could be deported but a federal district court issued a stay of deportation while considering a separate case challenging the arrest and detention. Khalil is an Algerian citizen as his mother's family descended from Abdel Qadir, the Algerian freedom fighter exiled by France in 1855 along with his followers to Greater Syria. Today many Syrians claim descendance from them. Some even take the name Al-Jazayeri, like a friend of mine. Khalil was born in Damascus in 1995 into a Palestinian family with roots in Tiberias before Israel's 1948 war drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, towns, villages and homeland. In 2012, the Khalils fled to Lebanon after the eruption of the Syrian civil conflict. Khalil earned his BA degree from the Lebanese American University in Beirut before being employed by the British embassy as a translator and manager of a scholarship programme. Having completed in December work on his Master's degree at Columbia, Khalil is slated to graduate next month. While a student he interned with UNRWA, the UN agency which cares for Palestinian refugees. He became involved in Palestinian activism in October 2023 and served as a spokesman for students participating in anti-Gaza war Columbia University protests and encampments. In interviews with mainstream media, he has said the fate of Palestinians and Israelis is 'intertwined' and that 'antisemitism' has no place in the protests. He mentioned that Jewish students were involved in the protests. He was singled out and targeted by hardline pro-Israeli group Betar and was the victim of a concerted campaign to deport him. More than 1,500 students at 240 US universities have seen their visas cancelled, disrupting their education and their lives. Like Khalil, none of the students have been found guilty of a crime. Instead, the administration is defining dissent as a threat to national security, especially when dissent involves Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank and criticism of Washington's total backing for Israel. Soon after returning office on Jan.20, Trump signed an executive order calling for deportation of students who have visas for studies at institutions of higher learning and have allegedly broken the law during anti-Israeli protests due to the Gaza war. Khalil's arrest followed Trump's cancellation of $400 million in grants and research contracts for Columbia on the grounds that it failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. The Trump administration is now using antisemitism as a blanket accusation to deny free speech and punish students and others who criticise Israeli, the US or the US government. This is a very dangerous game. Trump is aligning the US with hardline elements in Israel. Sixty-nine per cent of Israelis, of whom 54 per cent are ruling coalition voters, back ending the war on Gaza in exchange for the return of Israelis held by Hamas. Seventy per cent of Israelis does not trust the government, including 33 per cent of Coalition voters, while only 31 per cent trusts Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Furthermore. Trump has taken this stand despite the fact that at the end of March, 53 per cent of US citizens had an unfavourable opinion of Israel and confidence in Netanyahu was only 32 per cent. On April 15, US Public Radio reported that the 10-member non-partisan Jewish Council for Public Affairs stated that the Trump administration is endangering US Jewish citizens by targeting foreign students for protesting the Gaza war and punishing the universities they attend. 'Our safety as Jews has always been tied to the rule of law, to the safety of others, to the strength of civil society, and to the protection of rights and liberties for all,' the council said in a statement. Council head Amy Spitalnick said that 'she and her group are concerned that fear of antisemitism is being exploited to 'undermine our democracy.'' Writing on April 17 in the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, Yale University medical scientist Naftali Kaminski argued that Trump administration cuts of research funds for Columbia, Harvard, and Cornell are not due to non-violent pro-Palestinian protests on campus. 'The Trump Administration is not weaponising antisemitism to suppress pro-Palestinians on campus.... They are weaponising the discomfort experienced by some Jewish students amid mostly peaceful pro-Palestinian protests to suppress academic freedom, freedom of speech and independent research at America's most prestigious institutions. And when they succeed, they will indeed blame us, the Jews.'
The National
22-04-2025
- The National
Mahmoud Khalil: jailed pro-Palestine activist denied temporary release to be with wife as she gives birth
Federal immigration authorities denied Mahmoud Khalil's request for a temporary release from detention to attend the birth of his first child, who was born on Monday in New York, according to the Associated Press. Mr Khalil, a graduate of Columbia University who was a leader in campus pro-Palestine protests last year, is being held in an immigration detention centre in Louisiana after he was arrested last month and threatened with deportation. The activist had requested a two-week furlough on Sunday morning, noting that his wife, Noor Abdalla, had gone into labour eight days earlier than expected. His lawyers said he would be 'open to any combination of conditions' to allow the release, including wearing an ankle monitor and attending regularly scheduled check-ins with immigration authorities. But the director of the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office denied the request. Ms Abdalla said she had to give birth to her baby boy on Monday in New York without her husband by her side, which she called 'a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud and our son suffer'. 'My son and I should not be navigating his first days on earth without Mahmoud,' she added. 'ICE and the Trump administration have stolen these precious moments from our family in an attempt to silence Mahmoud's support for Palestinian freedom.' An immigration judge in Louisiana ruled earlier this month that the US government can proceed with efforts to deport Mr Khalil, whom authorities consider a national security risk. Judge Jamee E Comans concluded after a hearing that the government had sufficiently demonstrated Mr Khalil's presence in the US could have 'potentially serious foreign policy consequences', meeting the legal threshold for deportation. Mr Khalil's legal team have said it plans to appeal the ruling. Mr Khalil was born in Syria and is of Palestinian descent. He is also an Algerian citizen. He earned a degree in computer science from the Lebanese American University before working with the Syrian-American non-profit Jusoor. Before moving to the US in 2022, he worked for the British embassy in Beirut, according to his biography on the Society for International Development website. He earned a master's degree at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and is married to Ms Abdalla, a US citizen. He is a lawful US permanent resident. During the wave of pro-Palestine campus protests across the US last year, Mr Khalil acted as a student negotiator between demonstrators and the administration. Protesters at Columbia were urging the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel amid the war in Gaza. Mr Khalil was returning to his home in New York in early March with his wife when he was stopped by plainclothes immigration officers who placed him under arrest and told him his student visa had been revoked. When informed he was a green card holder, he was told that was also being revoked, according to his lawyer. Following his detention, he was sent to the immigration centre in Louisiana. His legal team has said they have had only limited access to him. The government has not accused Mr Khalil of any criminal conduct but has said he should be expelled from the country for his beliefs, quoting national security concerns. A memo submitted to the immigration court hearing Mr Khalil's case – signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio – said that while the activist's activities were 'otherwise lawful', letting him remain in the country would undermine 'US policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States'. The White House has also accused Mr Khalil of disseminating Hamas propaganda during the protests. Mr Khalil, however, has said that he is a political prisoner and that his detention is indicative of anti-Palestinian racism. 'The US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand US laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted,' he said in a letter made public last month.
