A court in Algeria sentenced the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal Sansal, in detention since November, or half of the sentence required by the prosecution on Thursday 27 years in prison.
Boualem Sansal is accused in particular of damage to the integrity of the territory for having taken over his account, in a French media of the far right, the position of Morocco according to which his territory would have been amputated for the benefit of Algeria under French colonization.
His arrest, on November 16 in Algiers, had aggravated the strong bilateral tensions caused last summer by a reversal of France, which supported a plan of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty for Western Sahara.
Emmanuel Macron call
During his trial on March 20, the prosecutor of the Criminal Court of Dar El Beida, near Algiers, had required ten years in prison against the novelist, 80 years old according to his publisher Gallimard. On the evening of the indictment, President Emmanuel Macron asked for his rapid release, saying having confidence in “the clairvoyance” of his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune who knows “that all that (the counts, editor’s note) is not serious”.
Little known in France before this case, Boualem Sansal benefits from vast support. Tuesday, in Paris, hundreds of people gathered to ask for his release, including far -right personalities like Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.
Before his incarceration, Boualem Sansal, a former Algerian senior official, a critical voice of power and fierce anti-Islamist, made frequent back and forth in Algeria, where his books are sold freely. During his trial, the writer denied any intention to undermine his country, explaining that he had exercised his “freedom of expression” and expressed “an opinion”, but recognized, according to the Echoroukhave underestimated the scope of your statements.