As a free Kabyle, Aksel Bellabbaci is a true man of peace. As President of the Kabyle Football Federation, he qualified Kabylia for the CONIFA World Cup organised in London in 2018.
He is guilty of no crime or misdemeanour other than proudly asserting his Kabyle identity in the face of a colonial, racist and terrorist Algeria that wants to wipe out everything Kabyle right down to its roots!
Algeria has asked France to extradite him, because the Algerian colonial regime has classified him as a ‘terrorist’ and accused him of having set fire to his Kabylia in 2021, the Kabylia he has always defended. Algeria also accuses him of having ordered the murder (sic) of Djamel Bensmain (in 2021), who everyone saw murdered inside an Algerian police van.
Aksel Bellabbaci has not returned to Kabylia since August 2019.
The AFP report is reproduced below:
Paris, France | AFP | Monday 09/09/2024 – 05:00 UTC+2 |
On Wednesday 11 September, the Paris Court of Appeal will examine Algeria’s request for the extradition of an opponent and senior member of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), which accuses him of ‘terrorist acts’ and of having ordered deadly forest fires in 2021.
Aksel Brahim Bellabbaci, 41, has been charged with 14 offences, some of which carry the death penalty, the president of the extradition chamber of the Court of Appeal announced at an initial hearing on 26 June.
Although the death penalty is provided for in the Algerian penal code, it is no longer applied by virtue of a moratorium in force since 1993.
A supporter of the MAK since 2007, Mr Bellabbaci is the right-hand man of Ferhat Meheni, president of this movement accused by Algiers of having ‘separatist’ aims and classified as a terrorist organisation.
He is one of 16 MAK members considered to be ‘terrorists’ by the authorities since February 2022 and has been sentenced several times in absentia in Algeria.
Aksel Bellabbaci, who has lived in France since 2012 and has not returned to Algeria since August 2019, is accused by the Algerian justice system of having ordered the fires that killed at least 90 people and ravaged thousands of hectares in August 2021 in Kabylia.
He is also suspected of having ‘instigated’ the fatal lynching of a 38-year-old painter, Djamel Bensmaïl, who had come to help local residents extinguish the flames and who was wrongly identified to the crowd as an arsonist, according to court documents consulted by AFP.
For this murder, the Algiers Court of Appeal sentenced 38 people to death, commuted to life imprisonment, in October 2023.
According to the court documents, Mr Bellabbaci gave ‘instructions and directives’ to MAK militants to go to Larbaa Nath Irathen, near Tizi Ouzou, where the lynching took place, and organise ‘an armed rally’ and an ‘assault on the police by closing the road with barricades’.
Investigations led to the identification of ‘19 suspects, including MAK activists and sympathisers’, ‘which proves that this crime had been prepared and planned in advance’, according to the Algerian judicial authorities.
– Political affair’ – The aim of this “odious crime”, according to the court, was “to sow unrest among the population, to spread the discourse of hatred and discrimination between the different categories of the Algerian people and to break the great wave of solidarity throughout the country in favour of the areas” hit by the fires.
Aksel Bellabbaci disputes the accusations. ‘Through me, it is the whole movement’ of the MAK, born in the wake of the “Kabyle Spring” in 2001, that the Algerian authorities wish to target, he explained to AFP, expressing surprise that “in just a few days all the evidence (had) been gathered”.
Algeria is ‘looking for a solution to stop the movement and its activities in Kabylia’, according to the activist, who accuses the country of having ‘planned the fires’.
‘We have testimonies, videos, and samples of white phosphorus’, which he claims was used as an incendiary agent. ‘This is evidence that shows that it was a State that was behind’ the arson attacks.
An examining magistrate from the anti-terrorism and transnational organised crime section of the Sidi M’Hamed court (centre) issued an arrest warrant for Mr Bellabbaci on 5 September 2021.
An extradition request was then sent to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in December 2021.
At the hearing on 26 June, the MAK leader, who has French residency status until 2027 and applied for asylum on 7 June, refused to be extradited to Algeria.
‘’I am serene and confident: the French justice system is free, even if this is a political affair with political interventions by one side or the other‘’, he said.
Diplomatic relations between France and Algeria, which were already difficult, have deteriorated sharply since President Emmanuel Macron gave Paris stronger support at the end of July for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the disputed territory of Western Sahara, where Algiers supports the cause of the Polisario Front independence fighters.
Algeria retaliated by withdrawing its ambassador to France and announcing other retaliatory measures.
With Agence France-Presse
SIWEL 092151 SEP 24
This Wednesday, a hearing will take place in the Paris court on the extradition request of a Kabyle opposition figure wanted by the rogue state of Algeria.
