Four months after he was sentenced to five years in prison, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune issued a pardon today, Wednesday, to French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, 81 years old, who suffers from cancer. He is the author of some of the most translated and widely read novels in the French language. He was tried in Algiers last March on charges of “harming the integrity of the state,” after he declared to a French magazine that part of Algerian territory is part of Morocco. Sansal has remained behind bars since his arrest on November 16 of last year, after a process characterized by secrecy and communication, until the announcement of the presidential pardon, which was issued at the request of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The Algerian presidency said in a statement on its Facebook account, “The President of the Republic responded positively to this request (from his German counterpart, which he submitted on Monday), which he considered important given its humanitarian nature.” Germany will sponsor Sansal’s transfer and medical treatment, as well as the courts, because of his “publications against the security and stability of the country.”
Known for his critical views against political Islam and government corruption in Algeria, he won the Academy’s Grand Prize for Fiction in France and the Peace Prize of the Booksellers’ Association in Germany. His first work, Barbarians section (1999), won the Prix du Premier Roman and the Prix Tropiques.
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said that he received “with satisfaction” the Algerian president’s decision to pardon the writer, whose conviction came amid escalating tension in relations between the two countries. After France, the former colonial power in Algeria, recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, which Algeria maintains its independence through self-determination, the Algerian government withdrew its ambassador to Paris in October last year.
In a speech in the National Assembly cited by Effie, Lecornu on Wednesday expressed hope that the writer would be able to “reunite with his family as soon as possible.” He also thanked “with all his heart everyone who contributed to this release, as a result of a respectful and calm approach,” he said.
President Emmanuel Macron, as well as many members of the French government and many French political and cultural figures, have repeatedly called on the Algerian authorities to release Sansal, who will obtain French citizenship in 2024. Many of them asked President Tebboune to grant him a pardon on the occasion of Independence Day, on July 5, for reasons related to age and health, in a clemency gesture that was not implemented at the time. Presidential pardon was granted to more than 6,500 prisoners on the occasion of Eid.
The case that began against Sansal, which ended with him being sentenced to five years in prison, arose after his arrest in Algiers after the publication of an interview conducted with him by a far-right French media in which he stated that Paris had ceded Moroccan lands to Algeria during the colonial era, words that Algeria considered as an insult to its national sovereignty. According to his lawyer, Sansal may have been used as a “hostage” and “scapegoat” in the exchange of fire in the diplomatic dispute that arose between Algeria and Paris over the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara.
During the trial, the writer denied at all times that he intended to insult the Algerian state, and described his statements as merely expressing a personal opinion. Arrest and prosecute the perpetrator German village also 2084: End of the WorldIt sparked a widespread wave of solidarity in his favor. Four Nobel Prize winners – Annie Ernault, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Orhan Pamuk, and Wole Soyinka – and a long list of writers from around the world – Salman Rushdie, Petr Slotergic, Andrej Kurkov, Roberto Saviano, and Leila Soleimani, among many others – signed a statement demanding his release. The text was headed by the French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud, winner of the Goncourt Prize. On November 4, members of the Goncourt Prize jury honored the imprisoned novelist by wearing a badge bearing the slogan “Je suis Sansal.”
Harassment campaign
Sansal transformed from a senior official in the Algerian Ministry of Industry into a banned intellectual, after publishing his first novel 26 years ago, in which he denounced corruption and religious fanaticism. Since then he has been subjected to a campaign of harassment in which he and his family lost their public jobs.
German mediation finally took effect in Sansal’s release. In October 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, President Tebboune, now 79 years old, was admitted to a hospital in Germany. The president isolated himself after a number of ministers were infected with the Corona virus. He reappeared in public in December of the same year, looking visibly thin and deteriorating, in a message to the nation broadcast on television.
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