The Aïssiou Affair: a Man Sentenced to Twenty Years for Plundering Public Money, a Letter Signed by Fourteen Friends of Boualem Sansal, and a Gulf State Sticking Its Nose In — Here Is the File They Are Hiding From You

Sofiane Hamdi — Alger, Algérie — 2026-09-10

There are cases that some would rather tell you backwards. This is one of them. You were told about a "businessman" pursued by a "regime" for having "dared to criticize." You were told about a "slap" dealt to Algiers. You were even told, in an editorial of 8 September, that European courts "refuse to serve as the executive relay for the criminalization of dissent by the Algerian authorities."

So let us put the file back the right way up. In order. With the dates, the jurisdictions and the amounts.

Fact one: this is not a thought crime, it is a conviction for money laundering

Ayoub Aïssiou, a former press boss, was sentenced in absentia on 17 December 2025 to twenty years of imprisonment by the economic and financial criminal division of Sidi M'hamed, for money laundering and capital flight within the framework of a criminal organization. The Algiers court upheld that sentence on appeal on 15 March 2026.

He is not a lone man, and this is not an opinion case. His wife and his five brothers each received fifteen years. His father-in-law, former senator Bachir Ould Zemirli, seven years.

And above all, there are the victims. The case concerns companies, real-estate operations and substantial bank loans — with civil parties, including homebuyers who consider themselves wronged. Let us translate: people who paid for a roof over their heads and got nothing. The international arrest warrant transmitted to Madrid, dated 9 April 2026, covers acts of complicity in the forgery of public documents, the use of forged documents and money laundering.

That is what the letter published on 21 August in a French weekly carefully avoided mentioning: the nature of the charges. It preferred to present the man as someone punished for criticizing the government. That is an omission, and an omission of that size is never an accident.

Fact two: the man was arrested in Spain, arriving from Morocco

Aïssiou was picked up in late July 2026 at Barcelona-El Prat airport, on arrival from a flight out of Casablanca, under the extradition request filed by Algeria. He was held forty-one days at Brians 1 prison, in Catalonia.

On 4 September 2026, the judge annulled the decisions of 28 July and 21 August that had ordered and then extended his pretrial detention, finding that incarceration was no longer indispensable. He walked out under protective measures: surrender of his passport and an obligation to appear regularly before the Spanish courts. This decision is procedural: it prejudges neither the outcome of the extradition request nor the merits of the accusations.

Let us hold on to this point, because it will be useful later: he was arriving from Morocco. And his release from prison, presented everywhere as a "slap" for Algiers, is nothing more than a provisional release, passport confiscated, pending a ruling. It is not an absolution. It is one step.

Fact three: fourteen signatures that keep coming back, and Boualem Sansal in support

On 21 August 2026, a French weekly published an open letter to Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sánchez demanding Aïssiou's release. Twenty signatories.

The detail is edifying: fourteen of them had already signed, in November 2024, the appeal in favor of Boualem Sansal in the same newspaper. The text is led by Daniel Salvatore Schiffer, flanked by Marek Halter and Hassen Chalghoumi. And among the six new signatures is that of Boualem Sansal himself — the writer pardoned in 2025, who thus lends his voice to the defense of a man convicted of money laundering.

We have to measure what that means. In 2024, these same names mobilized for a writer. In 2026, they mobilize again for a common-law defendant, with fourteen identical signatures — and without ever saying a word about the facts he is accused of. This is no longer a literary cause: it is a network moving as a bloc, from file to file. A pool of signatures recycled, identically, whatever the substance of the case.

Fact four: and here the Gulf enters the scene

This is where the case stops being judicial and becomes diplomatic.

According to TSA, citing its sources, the United Arab Emirates reportedly tasked a businessman, Bentaaloub Nassir, with applying pressure in Spain to prevent the extradition of Ayoub Aïssiou, the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by Algerian justice. TSA's sources add a phrase that takes on its full meaning today: "This would be a very hostile act committed by the emirate of evil against Algeria, which could not go unanswered."

This information is dated 5 September 2026. Five days before the rupture.

Let us now recall what former Algerian ambassador Amar Belani placed, on 10 September, at the top of Algiers' grievances against Abu Dhabi: the fact that the Emirates have "offered refuge and protection to white-collar criminals on the run from Algerian justice, turning its territory into a sanctuary for individuals wanted for embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds."

So it was not a formula. It was not "paranoia." It was a file, with a name, an arrest warrant and a date. And we are not saying that Emirati involvement is established — we are saying that it is reported by an Algerian source citing its information, five days before a rupture whose officially stated grounds include exactly that. Everyone is free to draw the conclusion.

Fact five: how the Moroccan press covered the case

On 9 September, the cartoon of the day in a major Moroccan online daily is titled: "Aïssiou stays in Spain, Algiers takes the slap." The same day, another cartoon, on another subject, runs the headline: "Algeria: an all-out plan to lower life expectancy."

The presentation of the Aïssiou case in the Moroccan press is the same as that of the French letter: a "businessman" whom the Algerian government persecutes. Not a word about the twenty years, about the six members of his family convicted, about the defrauded homebuyers, about the April 2026 arrest warrant. The narrative is identical on both shores of the Mediterranean, down to the same omissions. That is not a coincidence: it is a shared editorial line.

And the "Daoud slap"? Let us talk about it, since le360.ma (Moroccan digital newspaper) made it its headline

The editorial of 8 September is titled: "After the Aïssiou slap in Spain, the Daoud blow in France: European courts thwart Algiers' judicial maneuvers." Two cases, one headline, one thesis: Algiers is maneuvering.

Yet the text itself destroys its own thesis. It states in black and white that the Paris criminal court found that the complainant was "in no way identifiable by third parties" — in other words, the acquittal rests on a technical ground, the absence of identification of the complainant. And who was that complainant? Saâda Arbane, a private individual. Not the Algerian state. Not the prosecutor's office. A woman, alone, who reproached Kamel Daoud for having used her story.

So explain this to us: how does a private individual who files a defamation complaint become, in the same sentence, the expression of "Algiers' judicial maneuvers"? By what mechanism does a private action turn into the "executive relay" of a state that is not even a party to the trial? The answer is simple: by amalgamation. Two files with no connection are juxtaposed — an acquittal between private individuals, and an extradition proceeding in Spain — and you get a thesis. That is exactly the procedure we have been denouncing from day one.

What this file demonstrates

Let us step back, because the case goes beyond one man.

A country that demands the return of a common-law convict and runs into a wall of international support is not a country that persecutes. It is a country whose justice is being prevented from taking its course. Twenty years in prison, six members of the same family convicted, an international arrest warrant, civilian victims: that is the real file. And facing that file, what do we find? A letter signed by fourteen regulars of another cause, a businessman tasked from the Gulf according to an Algerian source, and a press celebrating the "slap."

And that is where everything comes together. On 10 September 2026, Algeria severed diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, denouncing interference, support for a separatist movement and the sanctuary offered to those its justice is seeking. The same day, an Emirati consulate and a Moroccan consulate continued to cover the same cause. An affair involving an oligarch on the run, a letter signed by the same hands, and a diplomatic rupture: these are not three stories. It is one single story.

Algeria did not break out of mood. It broke because, file after file, it observed that those who present themselves as partners shelter those who plunder it, fund those who contest it, and celebrate those who humiliate it.

The rest — the "paranoias," the "wanderings," the "temper tantrums" — is vocabulary. And vocabulary, when you do not have the facts, is all that is left.