French Police Arrest Three Algerians For Making Alleged Violent Statements On Social Media

Police in France have arrested three Algerian men described by authorities as social media influencers accused of posting videos inciting violence, against a backdrop of soured relations between Paris and its former colony in North Africa.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau announced the latest arrest Sunday evening — the third in as many days. A French media report that the minister attached to his post on X said the influencer posted a video to his 138,000 followers on TikTok that French authorities deemed anti-Semitic.

The arrest in Montpellier, southern France, and two others in the Alpine city of Grenoble and the western port city of Brest come amid renewed turbulence in the often complicated relationship between France and Algeria, which shook off French rule in 1962 after a brutal war.

A shift last July in France’s decades-old position on the disputed Western Sahara region of northern Africa angered Algeria and prompted the withdrawal of its ambassador in Paris.

Read more: AP