Portrait of General Rochdi Fethi Moussaoui, the new head of the Algerian DGDSE

He met the Tebboune children in Berlin while he was in charge of the security office at the Algerian embassy in the German capital. He took advantage of the president’s long hospitalization in a Berlin hospital from October 28 to December 29, after contracting COVID-19 in October from his entourage in Algiers.

Colonel Rochdi Fethi Moussaoui was the only one staying in the same hotel as the president’s family and the head of presidential security. He befriended Mohamed, Tebboune’s eldest son. They were together daily, inseparable. Mohamed Tebboune, although the president’s son, was delighted to be friends with a senior intelligence officer—perhaps due to a military complex. As he liked spending his weekends in the French capital, he subtly suggested to his father that his friend Colonel Sadek (his service nickname) be assigned to Paris.

A son of a diplomat from a revolutionary family originating from Annaba (in the east of the country) but with roots in the Casbah of Algiers, Rochdi Fethi Moussaoui inherited diplomatic skills, always knowing the right thing to say at the right moment, and was helpful, courteous, and charming to those he dealt with. His colleagues often said he was a bit of a sycophant, especially toward his superiors. He always maintained excellent relations with them and was friendly with their families. Even though he was new to the service and a young officer, he developed a friendly relationship with Major General Rachid Laalali, alias Attafi, the former head of the DGDSE.

Born in 1977 (47 years old), Fethi Rochdi Moussaoui joined the army, particularly the external security services, in 1999. Why external security? One of his close associates explained it by pointing out that both his father and one of his uncles were diplomats. One notable figure is Boualem Moussaoui, who was Algeria’s second ambassador to Paris, appointed in September 1963, succeeding Abdellatif Rahal. Boualem Moussaoui, born in September 1926 in Algiers, began his political activism at 17 within the Algerian People’s Party (P.P.A.) and then in the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (M.T.L.D.). He joined the F.L.N. at the start of the revolution and was arrested in May 1956 in Algeria, later interned in Fresnes. Released after the Evian Accords, he joined Ben Bella in Tunis and later in Tlemcen during the August 1962 crisis and became a member of the national coordination commission to prepare for the proclamation of the F.L.N.’s political bureau.

Another notable family member is Lahcene Moussaoui, a former Algerian ambassador to Tunisia from September 1992 to January 1996. In 1996, he succeeded Ahmed Attaf as Secretary of State for Cooperation and Maghreb Affairs (1996–1999) in the Ouyahia and later Hamdani governments. He was appointed Algeria’s ambassador to Brazil on February 14, 2001, before retiring. In a rare move for senior Algerian officials, Lahcene Moussaoui used his retirement to publish a book titled “Dialogue of a Madman with Himself: In Search of Your Impossible Love, Algiers.”

Born and raised in Algiers, Rochdi Fethi Moussaoui, alias Sadek, was fortunate not to have participated in the civil war and can therefore boast of having clean hands. No blood or dirty money stains his hands. Unknown to the general public and the military hierarchy, he burst onto the scene of the “big league” as a clean man. Will he stay that way for long?

Will he resist the siren calls? “Now that he has been propelled to a very high rank, he will undoubtedly be heavily solicited by all the businessmen, particularly those from the presidential clan—a clan to which he owes his rapid rise,” confided one of his acquaintances.

After only four years as a colonel, he was promoted to general at the suggestion of his friend Mohamed Tebboune. This promotion sparked quiet dissent within the DGDSE, where some of his colleagues had been stuck at the rank of colonel for 15 years. But they hadn’t had the luck of meeting the Tebboune children and befriending them.

In any case, Tebboune has just made a bold move by ousting one of the dirtiest generals in the army. Let’s not forget that this general had been sentenced to eight years in prison by the military court of Blida for “illicit enrichment, influence peddling, and money laundering.”

While in charge of the Research and Investigation Center (CRI) of the 1st military region, Djebbar Mehenna had transformed the CRI into a center for torture and extrajudicial executions. He had also turned part of the Le Palace hotel in Blida into a brothel where he was the main pimp.

After four years in the upper echelons under the leadership of Army General Saïd Chengriha, his career ended with yet another scandal: the arrest of his son Mouloud in Marseille for cocaine trafficking.

When will it be the turn of his protégé, accomplice, and friend General Abdelkader Haddad, alias Nacer El-Djenn? Haddad, responsible for countless murders of “poor innocents he finished off with a bullet to the head while they were tied up,” according to the testimony of Sergeant Houari, who knew him at the Ben-Aknoun Military Investigation Center in the hills of Algiers. If Tebboune intends to truly clean up the security services led by CPMI veterans, Haddad’s days are surely numbered.