Tensions between France and its former colony mounted after Algeria on Thursday sent back a suspect who had been arrested and expelled for a video posted on TikTok.
They had already heated up over the detention in Algerian of a leading Franco-Algerian writer.
France’s interior minister Bruno Retailleau on Friday accused Algeria of trying to humiliate France over the writer.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot threatened restrictions to visas or development aid, telling LCI television that France would have “no option but to retaliate” if “the Algerians continue to escalate” the row.
TikTok influencers arrested
Former prime minister Gabriel Attal said that France should cancel a 1968 accord with Algeria that gives Algerians special rights to live and work in France because of the dispute over what he called “preachers of hate”.
Four influencers supportive of Algerian authorities have been arrested in recent days over videos in which they are accused of calling for violence in France.
Algeria meanwhile has been holding French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal on national security charges.
“Algeria is seeking to humiliate France,” Interior Minister Retailleau said on a visit to the western city of Nantes, citing the case of the dual-national writer.
“Can a great country, a great people allow itself to keep in detention for the wrong reasons someone who is old and sick?”
Regarding the influencers, he said it was “out of the question to give a free pass to these individuals who spread hatred and anti-Semitism.
“I think we have reached an extremely worrying threshold with Algeria,” he added. France “cannot tolerate” an “unacceptable situation”.
One of those arrested is “Doualemn”, a 59-year-old influencer detained in the southern city of Montpellier after a video posted on TikTok.
He was sent by plane to Algeria on Thursday, according to his lawyer, but was sent back to France the same evening as Algeria refused to let the influencer enter.
Foreign Minister Barrot said he was “astounded” that Algerian authorities “refused to take back one of their nationals”.
