Late last month, Algerian whistleblower and former gendarme Mohamed Benhalima made some bleak predictions for what lay ahead of him.

“If I go back to Algeria, they are going to violate my human rights. Prison and torture await me,” he told the local Spanish media outlet Levante EMV while detained in a foreign internment camp in Valencia, southeastern Spain.

Days after sounding the alarm and raising concerns for his life, Benhalima was suddenly deported by the Spanish authorities.

On the evening of March 24, he was flown back to Algeria, where he was detained upon arrival.

A video of the moment quickly surfaced and spread online, showing Benhalima being escorted off the plane in handcuffs and transferred into a vehicle by members of the Algerian Research and Intervention Brigade.

There has been no official confirmation of his whereabouts, but the former gendarme is believed to be held at the Antar detention centre in Ben Aknoun.

Peaceful protests

Benhalima became actively engaged with the Algerian opposition in recent years. In 2019, he joined the Hirak movement, a nationwide wave of peaceful protests that demanded widespread political reform and the removal of military intervention in national politics.

His involvement in the protests was motivated by his experience in the Algerian military, which he joined in 2009.

In 2016, he was transferred to the defence ministry, where he “began to discover the truth about the criminals who are in command in Algeria”, as he said in a...

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