The following is from the French daily, Liberation (January 26, 2000), translated in full:

Malika Matoub, sister of Lounes Matoub, who along with her mother spurs a foundation whose goal is to reach the truth about the Kabyle singer’s murder on June 15, 1998, told Liberation that she would not accept "a sham trial destined to deceive the public and to close the case." She also requests "a real inquest" about the conditions and the people responsible for her brother’s murder. Since his assassination, the Parisian daily writes: "at least ten live or dead Islamists have been presented as (the) murderers," without the singer’s family giving them much credibility. His widow remembers that traffic on the road before the ambush was oddly reduced at a time when it should have been heavy.

While the police station is located only seven kilometers from the murder site, in Beni Douala, the policemen arrived much later after the murder. They also failed to set up any roadblock to attempt to stop the aggressors, and designated them as armed Islamists before starting the inquiry. Meanwhile, the public opinion in Kabylie immediately denounced the "murderous government."

At the site of the ambush, in Talat Roumane, villagers had reported to the authorities, three days before the ambush, the presence of a "group of individuals that had been roaming for several nights" with Kalashnikov and grenades. There were also scout cars with armed civilians (killed in an ambush five days after Matoub). The same morning of the murder, policemen supposedly asked shopkeepers to close their stores and to the inhabitants not to leave their homes or the area. The villagers who went to the police station to be witnesses were not received. The local police officers were transferred after the murder and the police presumably presented his widow, Nadia, who, as well as his two sisters, was hurt in the attack, with a report falsifying her declarations. When the lawyer’s widow tried to depose the civilian constitution at the Tizi Ouzou court, the judges tried to avoid them and planted in their path "manipulative procedures," while an emissary of the government contacted Malika Matoub to offer "compensation" and "indemnification of the victims of terrorism." She refused. Finally, a "repentant" accused by the authorities of being one of the murderers of Matoub, Abdelhakim Chenoui, disappeared after being arrested.