Algeria’s president pardons jailed writer Boualem Sansal

Algeria has agreed to pardon French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, who has been detained for a year on charges of “undermining national unity”.

Algeria’s presidency announced plans to free the 81-year-old writer on Wednesday, saying President Abdelmadjid Tebboune had accepted a request from his German counterpart to pardon him on “humanitarian grounds”.

Sansal, a prize-winning author in francophone North African literature, is known for his criticism of Algerian authorities.

He was arrested last November after giving an interview in which he said that France had unjustly transferred Moroccan territory to Algeria during the colonial period from 1830 to 1962 – a claim Algeria views as a challenge to its sovereignty.

In March, Sansal was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment under “anti-terrorism” laws. He has slammed the case against him as senseless, arguing Algeria’s constitution “guarantees freedom of expression and conscience”.

When questioned about his writings during a court session in June, Sansal asked: “Are we holding a trial over literature? Where are we headed?”

Sansal’s daughter expresses relief

Sansal’s case has soured relations between Algeria and France, which nosedived last summer when France shifted its position to recognise Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara territory, and which were further aggravated when Algeria rejected French attempts to return Algerians slated for deportation.

While France had urged for leniency in Sansal’s case, Algeria was more responsive to the intervention from Germany, whose President Frank-Walter Steinmeier appealed to his “longstanding personal relationship” with Tebboune in issuing the pardon request.

Sansal’s daughter Sabeha Sansal told the AFP news agency that she was relieved following the pardon and hoped to see her father soon.

Crackdown on dissent

Human rights advocates in Algeria claim the country has used the controversial “anti-terrorism” law employed in Sansa’s case to stifle dissent following the 2019 pro-democracy Hirak protests.

On Tuesday, Algerian poet and activist Mohamed Tadjadit – who rose to prominence for his public recitations during the Hirak demonstrations – was jailed for five years on charges including “condoning terrorism”. About 20 NGOs, including Amnesty International, have denounced the allegations against him as “baseless” and called for his release.

Also imprisoned in Algeria is French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes, who was found guilty in June for “glorifying terrorism” after he allegedly communicated with an official of a football club in the Kabyle region who also heads a banned Kabyle nationalist group, according to France’s Le Monde newspaper.

Press freedoms group Reporters Without Borders has called for the release of Gleizes ahead of his appeals trial in December, saying he is “guilty only of practising his profession as a sports journalist and of loving Algerian football”.