Mohamed Abdellah: Algerian anti-corruption activist and political opponent is risking illegal deportation from Spain to face torture in Algeria.
By: Quintus Lollius Urbicus
Tags: Algeria, Barcelona, Gendarmerie, Mohamed Abdellah, Spain

Mohamed Abdellah: Algerian anti-corruption activist and political opponent is risking illegal deportation from Spain to face torture in Algeria. Quintus Lollius Urbicus Aug 14·4 min read

Mohamed Abdellah

Mohamed Abdellah is an Algerian political activist exiled in Spain since 22/08/2018. He is a former member of the Algerian Gendarmerie, the rural police branch of the Algerian Armed Forces. He worked as an aerial supervisor within the Gendarmerie helicopter crew. His main duties were to provide air communication support, and to act as an aerial cameraman, recording daily aerial footage of border surveillance.

Aerial border surveillance is aimed at preventing smuggling and other illegal trafficking across the north-eastern Algerian border with Tunisia. While on duty, Abdellah became familiar with the high level of corruption running across the border, in many instances this was being facilitated by high ranking Gendarmerie officers. Mohamed Abdellah decided to engage in combating the rife corruption among his fellow officers. After trying to alert and challenge the authorities in vain, he ended up contacting Algerian anti-corruption activists inside and outside Algeria in order to help him denunciate it. He joined the political activists’ about two years before departing his post; regularly reporting about bribery and all sorts of dishonest and fraudulent conduct within the Gendarmerie as well as the local authorities.

Mohamed Abdellah published detailed insight about the corruption infesting one of the most important security institutions in Algeria, which instead of protecting the country’s assets, was being converted to a medium to enrich high ranking officers and local administrators.

Fearful for his life as his identity risked getting discovered, he left Algeria for Spain on 8 November 2018. As a precautionary measure, he sought the protection of the Spanish authorities within his protection entitlements and Spain obligations under international law covering the country’s duty towards people with well-founded fear from persecution for political convictions.

He moved to the Northern Spain fearing that agents of Algeria’s secret services may be operative in Southern Spain, who may eventually track him down and harm him. Mohamed Abdellah never gave up his anti-corruption actions. He took to this struggle to social media platforms. His credibility and resolution earned him high numbers of followers among the Algerian public. (131K on Facebook — 134K on YouTube).

Denouncing the corruption which is eroding the security institutions of the Algerian regime, has also made of him and his family the target of constant death threats, intimidation, bullying and chronic harassment by agents of the Algerian secret services’ and their online trolls.

On 4 August 2020, he was subject to an unprevoked vicious attack in Alicante by Algerian individuals thought to be linked to the Algerian notorious criminal, Saïd Bensedira the informant of the secret services, who posted on an online explicit threat to harm Abdellah on 31/07/2020.

The Algerian despotic and militarised regime tried every possible way to silence Mohamed Abdellah; they put pressure on him and his family, tried to hack his smart phone, emails and social media accounts.

They came up with an imaginary scenario in March 2021, whereby Abdallah’s name was added to a fictitious plot around a fraudulent fake businessman called Ahmed Mansouri. The hoax was a mixture of drug trafficking, money laundering and pseudo-Islamism activities that Abdellah has no connection with whatsoever. However, the Algerian regime found in it an opportunity to include his name and issue him with an international arrest warrant based on ludicrous ‘terror’ matter.

Mohamed Abdellah is a peaceful anti-corruption activist. The illegitimate Algerian regime is famous for making up all kinds of unfounded accusations against his political opponents. The regime is desperately playing the so called ‘terrorism’ card in order to obtain from a democratic state such as Spain the deportation of a prominent and outspoken vociferous freeman. Spain must never commit to such an unforgivable act akin to fascist regimes.

Removing Mohamed Abdellah to Algeria also means that Spain is deliberately subjecting him to harsh rounds of medieval-age-style torture, systematically practiced in the Algerian military police dark chambres. It is also the true burial of an alive decent man in a grave where he is to be surrounded by the most atrocious injustices for decades to come, with all the terrible foreseeable consequence on him and his family.

This amounts to the horrible and shocking commission and preparation of a crime by the Algerian military regime, aided by Spain, to murder a completely innocent man, and leave behind him catastrophic consequences on his wife and young children.

Above all, this is a dangerous breach of Spain’s obligations under the provisions of article 3 of both the United Nations and the European Conventions against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment:

Article 3 (UNHCR)

1. No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

Article 3 (ECHR)

“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”

¡No a la extradición de Mohamed Abdellah!

!Libertad a todos los presos políticos de Argelia!

Libertad para Mohamed Abdellah — Solidaridad con Mohamed Abdellah

Vitoria-Gasteiz — 12.08.2021