Ousted head of Algerian intelligence 'flees country aboard speedboat'
میدل-ایست-آی - 1404-07-07 18:58:55
Ousted head of Algerian intelligence 'flees country aboard speedboat'
One of Algeria's most powerful military figures who recently fell from grace, Major General Abdelkader Haddad, fled the country aboard a speedboat for Spain fearing for his life, according to Spanish newspaper El Confidencial.
Haddad, better known by his nickname Nasser El Djinn (“the Devil”), headed the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), Algeria's most influential intelligence service, for nearly a year.
He was dismissed in May for unspecified reasons, after which he was incarcerated in military prisons and then placed under house arrest in an upscale Algiers neighbourhood. He was due to be tried soon.
The charges against the former close associate of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, whose re-election Haddad supported in September 2024, remain unknown.
Observers presume his fall from grace is due to investigations he launched into suspected corruption and profiteering involving high-ranking families with ties to the ruling class.
According to El Confidencial journalist Ignacio Cembrero, Haddad managed to elude the Algerian military police and escape in the early hours of 19 September.
Sources in the Algerian diaspora and Spanish police told Cembrero that Haddad crossed the Mediterranean by boat and reached Alicante.
Upon arriving in the city in southern Spain, where he owns property, Haddad told sources he fled because he knew he would be killed before appearing before a judge and his death would be presented as a suicide.
Shortly before El Confidencial's revelations, Le Monde reported that Haddad's disappearance had led to a massive security deployment in Algiers and its outskirts on 18 and 19 September, with police and military roadblocks, vehicle searches causing massive traffic jams, and helicopters flying over the area.
While Algerian authorities and media kept quiet about Haddad’s escape, rumours began to circulate about his whereabouts, with some Algerian influencers living abroad relaying reports that he had surrendered to the authorities.
Clan struggles
According to Le Monde, Haddad’s escape sent shockwaves through the top brass, as it could only have happened owing to complicity within the security apparatus.
The incident, according to the French newspaper, reveals the divisions and recurring instability within the Algerian political and security system, and is said to have fuelled tensions between the president and the army chief of staff, Said Chengriha, amid suspicions of a coup d'etat being plotted.
Algeria has had five heads of the DGSI and seven heads of the foreign intelligence service since Tebboune came to power in 2019.
Since the Hirak, the mass protest movement that led to the ousting of longtime ruler Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019, purges have become cyclical in the country. Le Monde counts around 200 senior officers, including 30 generals, behind bars.
According to analysts, the mechanisms within the Algerian security system that previously served to conceal internal tensions started to break down in 2015 when Bouteflika and his army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah decided to disband the Intelligence and Security Department (DRS), which coordinated domestic, foreign and military intelligence services, under the leadership of Mohamed “Toufik” Mediene.
This shook the system formed around the three main actors of Algerian power - the army, the presidency and the DRS - at a time when Bouteflika was encouraging the rise of oligarchs, thereby introducing a fourth pole of influence where profiteering practices were rife.
For Cembrero, who points out that Haddad himself has been accused of committing atrocities during the civil war in the 1990s, the escape highlights "the clan struggles" that have persisted within the Algerian army for nearly a decade.
"The seemingly most powerful generals can find themselves behind bars overnight," he wrote.
