“I am happy, we have oil and chengriha”. This trivial message exchanged by Boualem Sansal on WhatsApp messaging with Xavier Driencourt, the ex-ambassador of France in Algeria, was read at his accusation hearing, on March 20, according to a report of the Arabic-speaking daily Echorouk. This Thursday, March 27, the outrage with a constituted body, that is to say the insult to the army, was selected from the reasons for the conviction of the Franco-Algerian writer at five years in prison and the equivalent of a fine of 3,500 euros. The court considers that it quipped the defense minister and chief of the armies, Saïd Chengriha.
“First, can we laugh at everything? Secondly, can we laugh with everyone?”,, Wondered the humorist Pierre Desproges on France Inter, in September 1982. To these questions, the court of Dar El Beida, east of Algiers, answers twice. During his appearance, he was criticized several times in Boualem Sansal for joking with Xavier Driencourt, who has become the black bane in Algerian power in recent months. In addition to the sentence on Said Chengriha, Boualem Sansal was sentenced to the grounds of having joked – twice – on the failed membership of Algeria to the BRICS, this group of new emerging countries, in the summer of 2023. A national murderer, it seems, on which the writer would have been wrong to exchange two jokes on Whatsapp with the French diplomat. The court has seen an attack on the national economy.
The 80 -year -old Franco -Algerian would also have written an article – probably never published – evoking “the subject of the military power of Algeria and the army”, which the judge asked him to justify himself. “I wrote this article to present my point of view without any intention to harm the military institution, which I respect so much,” replied Boualem Sansal, according to Echorouk.
Boualem Sansal’s interview with the far -right media Boundaries was not the subject of any debate before the judge, but he was indeed held against him. “The whole problem comes from a decision taken by the French government: when France colonized Algeria, the entire western part of Algeria was part of Morocco, Tlemcen, Oran and even to Mascara […] France has decided like that, arbitrarily, to draw a border “,, had declared the writer on October 2, 2024. For these remarks on the layout of the Algerian-Moroccan border, the man of letters is sentenced to involvement in national unity.
“Mak” and DGSE
Sansal has been criticized for having exchanged messages on WhatsApp with a certain “Yazid”, an alleged member of “MAK”, the movement for the self -determination of Kabylia. This organization has been considered a terrorist since May 2021. It requires a referendum on the administration of Kabylia, including the possibility of independence. The “MAK” is decidedly at the heart of the scandals between France and Algeria since in December 2024, the public channel Al24 News claimed to reveal a French plot involving the DGSE and the MAK. The secret services would have projected to facilitate the terrorist actions of the MAK in Algeria. Accusations totally refuted by Stéphane Romatet, the French ambassador, before which these reproaches have never been formulated, contrary to what the Algerian press has been able to write.
Boualem Sansal denied having exchanged any messages with a member of the “MAK”. He was still sentenced to the detention of videos and publications threatening national security and stability. In November 2023, already, several Algerian media, including the very virulent Patriotic Algeria site, imagined MAK meetings “under the aegis of the DGSE”. The accusation chief of “intelligence with the enemy”, the enemy in question being Xavier Driencourt, was abandoned to him.
What strikes in the procedure, on the other hand, is the use of private exchanges of Boualem Sansal to justify attacks on national dignity. The writer’s arrest at the airport on November 16, 2024, on the grounds of the maintenance at the media Boundariesallowed the Algerian police to get their hands on his electronic devices, said the judge on March 20. This excavation, especially of his computer and his mobile phone, allowed investigators to set up a more important file against the novelist.
This well -known strategy of lawyers is sometimes called “fishery to derivative nets”, a method used to “surreptitiously feed a file that lacks elements”, explained the lawyer Etienne Madranges, former judge, in 2020. It is a question of provoking a first excavation on a precise motif then of using the elements obtained in a second step to obtain a conviction. Before the judge, the 80 -year -old writer invoked his “freedom of expression” and “private conversations with friends”. In pure loss.
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