Over the past two days, Algerians have been preoccupied on social media with shocking footage of a robbery at the country's largest popular mobile phone market.
The biggest shock came when children appeared in a video that sparked widespread controversy, threatening to repeat the operation soon, before security services intervened to arrest them.
In the video, the children, aged between 10 and 13 years, confessed to having stolen from shops in the country's largest mobile phone market, in the "Belouar" district in El Harrach, east of the capital, Algeria.
"We will do it again"
Speaking of the operation, the minors expressed "pride" and threatened to repeat it soon, with one of them saying: "We were the ones who carried out the Belfort operation, and we will do it again."
They also challenged the shop owners, saying: "If you can, sleep in your shops... This time we only stole 200 million centimes (9 thousand dollars) because there wasn’t anyone there, or else we would have stolen two billion (80 thousand dollars)."
The video sparked widespread controversy in Algeria, with social media users expressing significant disapproval.
Meanwhile, social expert Abdel Hafiz Sandoqi considered this phenomenon extremely dangerous. He said in statements to Al-Arabiya.net, "It is not just the act of stealing that we all denounce, but what's worse is that these individuals openly express pride in their actions and threaten to repeat them, like the children who left a few months ago on a journey of despair, after they took over a boat."
He also added, "I think there needs to be swift intervention to instill concepts within Algerian society, as such videos, along with some of the comments, have portrayed these children as adventurers or heroes, to the extent that some are giving them justifications like the market being illegal, or that the traders at the Belfou market deserve what happens to them... and so on."
Worse still, according to the speaker, "we are dealing with teenagers and children who are influenced by what they see on social media, and their moral standards are still not clear, and growing up with these misconceptions will create a future generation that is intellectually distorted."
On his part, lawyer Farid Sabri clarified that "Algerian legislation has not specified special provisions for minors in the crime of theft, but rather addressed them in the Penal Code under the section on criminal responsibility, distinguishing between minors under the age of thirteen and those aged 13 to 18." He added that "the former are subject to protection or education measures as outlined in Article 444 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, due to a lack of mental contrivance, the criminal intent which is based on full awareness."
He continued in statements to Al-Arabiya.net that "the latter are discussed in Articles 49-50, where Article 49 states that those aged from 13 to 18 are either subjected to protection or educational measures, or to reduced penalties."
As for the punishment, the speaker said: "They are punished with imprisonment from one to five years and a fine from 100 thousand to 500 thousand Algerian dinar, in addition to supplementary penalties mentioned in Article (3), and Article 350 bis and subsequent articles address the legal circumstances that worsen the punishment for theft."
