Military-led Algeria and Iran under the mullahs each represent, in their own way, a model of the paranoid state, where justice is used as a blunt weapon, intellectuals are turned into criminals, and tyranny is disguised as patriotism. These are no longer governments, but jailers of open-air prisons.
Iran: Ayatollah’s justice or death by lies
Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, two French nationals arrested in Tehran in May 2022, stand accused of attempting to overthrow the Islamic Republic on behalf of Mossad. Iranian authorities charge them with espionage, conspiracy, and corruption, a list of accusations drawn from the playbook of the Inquisition and punishable by death.
Iran uses foreign nationals as bargaining chips in a diplomacy rooted in blackmail, fear, and falsehoods. As the regime teeters ideologically, it sees spies everywhere. The Iranian state imprisons, tortures, executes and then claims to be the victim of the West.
Algeria: A Junta That Jails Books and Journalists
Meanwhile, Algeria’s military regime mirrors these methods. Same paranoia, same repression, same contempt for freedom.
French journalist Christophe Gleizes was arrested in Tizi Ouzou for daring to investigate the Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (JSK). After 13 months of silence and secret detention, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for « glorifying terrorism », simply because he met with a JSK official connected to the MAK, a Kabyle movement arbitrarily labeled « terrorist » by the regime.
But perhaps the most disgraceful case is that of Boualem Sansal, a world-renowned Algerian writer, 80 years old and battling cancer, sentenced to five years in prison for a historical statement about Morocco’s borders. The regime declared that speaking the truth amounts to « undermining national unity ».
Iran and Algeria may appear different, one Islamist, the other military; one a medieval theocracy, the other a republic hollowed out by a clique of generals, but they are twins in practice. Both are built on state terror, absolute control, and the suppression of independent thought.
These systems do more than censor: they manufacture enemies, turning journalists into terrorists, writers into traitors, foreigners into spies.
The enemy is never real, it is useful. It justifies repression, fuels nationalism, and distracts from the real scourges: corruption, unemployment, dictatorship, and youth exodus.
Meanwhile, it was reported that Tarek Bouslama, former CEO of the IMETAL Group, has died at Mustapha-Pacha Hospital in Algiers after an emergency transfer from Koléa prison, where he had been held since March 2023, without ever being tried. Who’s next?…