{"id":12937,"date":"2026-05-08T21:04:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/12937\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T21:04:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:04:33","slug":"france-sends-envoy-back-to-algeria-to-ease-relations-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/12937\/","title":{"rendered":"France sends envoy back to Algeria to ease relations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Rufo (C) stands next to Algerian Minister of the Mujahideen and Beneficiaries Abdelmalek Tacherift (L), during the commemoration ceremony in Setif, Algeria [Getty]<\/p>\n

France’s ambassador to Algeria has returned to the North African country along with a senior envoy set to commemorate a colonial-era<\/a> massacre, a move seeking to improve frayed relations.<\/p>\n

Ties between France and Algeria have been fraught since 2024, when Paris officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara<\/a>, where Algeria supports the pro-independence Polisario Front.<\/p>\n

French Deputy Armed Forces Minister Alice Rufo landed in Setif, eastern Algeria, on Friday to attend ceremonies marking the 1945 repression of mainly Muslim Algerian protesters by French colonial troops.<\/p>\n

Rufo was accompanied by Ambassador Stephane Romatet, who will resume his duties in the North African country more than a year after being recalled from his post.<\/p>\n

The visit marks a major sign of rapprochement between Algiers and Paris, with the Elysee saying<\/a> it reflected the “determination to address relations between France and Algeria with honesty, while respecting all the memories connected to them” and to “restore an effective dialogue”.<\/p>\n

The 1945 crackdown led by French General Raymond Duval left as many as 45,000 people dead, according to Algerian figures. Pro-independence protests broke out following a rally on May 8 of that year marking the allied victory over Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

Tensions between Algiers and Paris worsened in 2024 over the arrest of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal – who was pardoned last November – and in April 2025 when an Algerian consular official was charged in France over the alleged abduction of Algerian influencer and government critic Amir DZ.<\/p>\n

Friday’s visit is the second trip to Algeria by a French cabinet ministry in less than three months, following Interior Minister Laurent Nunez’s visit in February.<\/p>\n

While both countries show signs of a diplomatic thaw, an unresolved issue remains the detention of a French sports journalist in Algeria on terror charges.<\/p>\n

Christophe Gleizes, 37, was arrested in May 2024 while travelling to northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie.<\/p>\n

In June last year, he was sentenced to seven years in jail for “glorifying terrorism” after being accused of having been in contact with a member of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), a foreign-based group that Algiers has designated a terrorist organisation.<\/p>\n

His family said last week Gleizes had withdrawn his appeal to Algeria’s highest court, a move seen as opening the way for a presidential pardon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rufo (C) stands next to Algerian Minister of the Mujahideen and Beneficiaries Abdelmalek Tacherift (L), during the commemoration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4725,5,6917],"class_list":{"0":"post-12937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-algeria","9":"tag-france","10":"tag-france-algeria-relations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}