At the end of a two-hour interview with Algerian President Tebboune, Ms. Rufo also announced that French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes, held in Algeria for nearly a year, would receive a consular visit “in the coming days,” the first since his incarceration.
Arrested during a report in May 2024 in Kabylie, he was sentenced on appeal in early December to seven years in prison for “apology of terrorism.” His family announced on Tuesday that he withdrew his appeal in March, a move aimed at possibly obtaining a pardon from President Tebboune.
This visit, the second by a member of the French government in less than three months, after that of Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez in mid-February, helped thaw relations between Paris and Algiers.
Ambassador Stéphane Romatet returned to the country on this occasion, nearly a year after being recalled by Emmanuel Macron at the height of tensions.
Year “Useful”
This diplomatic crisis was triggered in August 2024 by Paris’s support for a plan for autonomy “under Moroccan sovereignty” for the disputed territory of Western Sahara. In this territory with an undefined status according to the UN, a conflict has pitted Morocco against the independence movement Polisario Front, supported by Algeria for 50 years. Algeria immediately withdrew its ambassador from France.
The crisis worsened with the arrest in November 2024 of Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal (pardoned by President Tebboune in November 2025) and the indictment in April 2025 of an Algerian consular agent accused of being involved in the kidnapping in France of Algerian influencer Amir DZ.
Alice Rufo carried a letter from French President Emmanuel Macron, who is entering his final year in office and aims to make it a “useful” year for relations between France and Algeria.
The meeting with Mr. Tebboune also touched on “security and defense cooperation,” “which is very important in the current context,” “in Africa but also elsewhere,” she emphasized.
In the morning, she also discussed with Deputy Minister of Defense Saïd Chengriha the reinvigoration of cooperation, especially in the fight against terrorism.
This cooperation was never completely interrupted but also suffered from the crisis between the two countries.
Mali, which shares 1,300 kilometers with Algeria, represents a security issue for Algiers, as the north of the country is a hotspot of instability, with the presence of jihadist groups.
The Algerian president and the French minister also discussed ways to “intensify” their cooperation on migration issues. This cooperation had already resumed after the visit of Laurent Nuñez.
They also discussed “judicial cooperation” between the two countries, particularly in the “fight against drug trafficking,” she added.
“Immunize”
Paris’s objective is to “immunize” cooperation issues from the political turmoil of the two countries, particularly with the approach of the French presidential election, according to a French source knowledgeable about the matter.
Speaking to students at the French high school in Algiers where he accompanied the minister, Stéphane Romatet agreed that there was a need for “a little work to repair the link that has been damaged.” “But things are so intertwined (between France and Algeria, ed.) that this link cannot be broken,” he judged.
On the memorial front, the Algerian president and the French minister agreed to revive the work of the joint commission of historians. Comprising five French and as many Algerian historians, it was created in August 2022 but has not met since the spring of 2024.
Alice Rufo began her trip on Friday with a symbolic stop in Sétif, where she laid a wreath in memory of an independence activist. This city, like Guelma and Kherrata, was the scene of a bloody repression by the French army of independence protests starting on May 8, 1945, resulting in 45,000 deaths according to Algeria and between 1,500 and 20,000 deaths (including 103 Europeans) according to various sources.
For historian Benjamin Stora, present in the delegation, “a single gesture will not suffice, it is a whole memorial project (on the French colonization of Algeria between 1830 and 1962, ed.), long, slow, complex, and patient that needs to be implemented.”
