A critic of Algerian power, the writer, born to a Moroccan father and an Algerian mother, has been incarcerated since mid-November for endangering state security and has been in a care unit since mid- December.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune spoke for the first time of the arrest in mid-November in Algiers of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, calling him“imposter.. sent” by France, according to the Algerian information site TSA. “You send an impostor who does not know his identity, does not know his father and comes to say that half of Algeria belongs to another state”declared Mr. Tebboune, in an extract from an official speech, reported by TSA.
Critic of Algerian power, Mr. Sansal, 80 years old, born to a Moroccan father and an Algerian mother, has been incarcerated since mid-November for endangering state security and has been in a care unit since mid-December. According to the French daily The Worldthe power in Algiers would have taken badly Mr. Sansal's statements to the French media Frontières, taking up Morocco's position according to which the territory of the country would have been truncated under French colonization for the benefit of Algeria.
The author of 2084: the end of the worldnaturalized French in 2024, is prosecuted under article 87 bis of the Penal Code, which punishes “as a terrorist or subversive act, any act targeting the security of the State, the integrity of the territory, the stability and the normal functioning of institutions”.
“Colonization has left Algeria in ruins”
In a “address to the nation” delivered before both houses of Parliament, Mr. Tebboune, re-elected for a second term at the beginning of September, strongly attacked France, according to extracts in Arabic published on the official website of the presidency. “Those (in France, Editor's note) who say that we left Algeria a paradise should know that 90% of the Algerian people were illiterate at the time of independence”stressed Mr. Tebboune, estimating that “colonization (1830-1962, Editor’s note) left Algeria in ruins (…) they must admit that they killed and massacred Algerians”.
On the issue of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony of which Morocco controls 80% of the territory but which is claimed by the separatists of the Polisario Front supported by Algeria, Mr. Tebboune considered that it was a question of“a question of decolonization and self-determination”.
According to him, the autonomy plan “under Moroccan sovereignty” defended by Rabat is “a French idea, not Moroccan”.
Algiers withdrew its ambassador from Paris at the end of July when French President Emmanuel Macron gave strong support to Moroccan proposals on Western Sahara, before going to Rabat at the end of October.
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