France Between Journalist Intimidation and Dirty Game of Secession: When Paris’s Harassment Converges with “MAK” Terror Plot
✍️ BY: Maamar Gani
Algiers – December 2025 – In a scene that reveals Paris’s descent from the rhetoric of “republican values” into blatant coercive practices, French police arrested the Algerian journalist Mehdi Ghezzar near his residence, before releasing him hours later.
Is it an isolated incident? Absolutely not. Ghezzar himself has been complaining for months about systematic harassment every time he enters or leaves Parisian airports — without explanation, without charges, and without the slightest respect for the basic human rights France never tires of lecturing the world about.
Placing Ghezzar on the S-File and on the “Wanted Persons” list was merely the most brazen episode in a long-running chain of pressure. It began with his removal from the RMC airwaves because his positions on the genocide in Gaza displeased the new guardians of “freedom of expression” in Paris. It is the price paid by free voices who dare to speak truth in a state addicted to monopolizing narratives, a state that has transformed itself into both judge and executioner.
Even more absurd is that Ghezzar’s arrest comes just days after the heavy sentence handed down to French journalist Christophe Gleizes : seven full years, on charges of “glorifying terrorism.” Yes, the trial took place under the law — but it was presented to the French public as a battle for “freedom of opinion.” A flagrant contradiction that reveals freedom in France is not a universal value but a privilege granted or withdrawn according to identity, position, and the prevailing political winds.
It is clear that Paris is no longer content with straining its official relations with Algeria; it has shifted to narrower, noisier methods, targeting Algerian journalists in the heart of the French capital. The repeated arrest of Ghezzar cannot be separated from the year-long crisis between the two countries, nor from France’s attempts to exert political pressure through security and administrative tools supposedly designed to protect society from serious threats — not to punish voices “out of tune” with the Parisian mood.
This is neither a “misstep” by the police nor a “technical error,” but a systematic practice reflecting a growing tendency within French authorities to use exceptional security measures as a political weapon. As if France wants to tell Algeria and its journalists: “We can tighten the noose around you even inside your homes.”
Thus, the Fifth Republic — now grappling with suffocating internal and external tensions — turns into a state that prosecutes journalists for their opinions and brandishes opaque security files to intimidate them, all while continuing to present itself, with no small dose of irony, as the champion of rights and liberties.
The arrest of Mehdi Ghezzar is not an isolated incident but a clumsily delivered political message with a very clear intent: France is resorting to blackmail, weaponizing the security narrative to muzzle Algerian voices, in a desperate attempt to compensate for its declining influence and its floundering foreign policy.
This is the era of the new France: a France that silences journalists instead of engaging them, that waves security dossiers instead of confronting the truth. It is an exposed policy of intimidation, no matter how Paris tries to wrap it in artificial legal rhetoric.
December 14: A Suspicious Date Raising Algeria’s Concerns About France
Political and media circles in Algeria react with heightened sensitivity to the date announced by the terrorist Ferhat Mehenni for his so-called “Declaration of the Kabyle Republic” on December 14 — a declaration Algeria views as a dangerous separatist farce aimed at undermining national unity and stability.
Although France has issued no clear position regarding these threats, its silence — and its continued tolerance of Mehenni’s activities and those of his entourage — is widely interpreted in Algeria as a troubling form of complacency.
And because politics admits no vacuum, many observers believe that the harassment of Algerian journalists in Paris — such as what happened to Mehdi Ghezzar — is not disconnected from France’s wavering stance on the separatist file. While Paris brandishes security measures against Algerian journalists, Mehenni moves freely, holding conferences and announcing perilous political dates without the slightest restriction.
This contradiction fuels a deeply entrenched sentiment in Algeria that France practices blatant double standards: on one hand, cracking down on Algerian voices that challenge it; on the other, showing leniency toward voices actively working against Algeria’s unity.
This raises a difficult and legitimate question:
How can France pursue a journalist merely for media statements while turning a blind eye to separatist activity that threatens the stability of a neighboring state?
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