writer Boualem Sansal arrested at Algiers airport

Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, 75, was arrested on Saturday November 16 upon his arrival at Algiers airport from Paris, several sources assure Mondeconfirming information given by Marianne. He would have been arrested by elements of the Algerian General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) and should be presented shortly before the public prosecutor, indicate the same sources. Editions Gallimard, its publisher, say “very worried”, Mr. Sansal has not given any news and has remained unreachable for several days.

“It was thought that his cell phone had been confiscated by the authorities upon his arrival at Algiers airportexplains to Monde son ami Xavier Driencourt. But he did not respond to his emails, his WhatsApp or his landline at home. » The former French ambassador to Algiers (2008-2012, 2017-2020) says he had dinner the day before with the author. “He returned home on an Air France flight the next day. He wasn't worried.”assure M. Driencourt.

The reasons for the writer's arrest are currently still unknown. An engineer, trained at the Polytechnic School of Algiers, he was a senior civil servant and held the title of Director General of Industry and Restructuring, until he was dismissed from his position in 2003. Since that he devoted himself to writing, he endeavored to go against the grain of most of the taboos and prejudices of Algerian society, where the intellectual and political effervescence of the first years of independence has given way to marginalization and repression of deviant opinions, since the coup d'état of Colonel Houari Boumédiène in 1965 and the seizure of power by the military.

Stiffness of the authorities

Thus, in his first book, The Barbarian Oath (Gallimard, 1999), he tried to understand the mentalities which had pushed his compatriots into the murderous civil war of the “Black Decade” (1992-2002). In The German Village (Gallimard, 2008), he unearthed the question of the troubled relationships between Nazism and certain movements fighting against colonization. Likewise, he did not hesitate to go to Israel in 2012 or to maintain relationships with Israeli writers, such as David Grossman. He supported the Hirakthe protest movement against the candidacy of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika for a fifth term (2019), and protested against the fate reserved for migrants by his government.

Boualem Sansal has always made it a point to stay in Algeria, in the town of Boumerdès, about fifty kilometers east of Algiers, where, until then, he had not been worried by the authorities. His books were not banned in the country. According to our information, he was in Algeria on November 5 and was able to leave the country without difficulty. His arrest seems to confirm a tightening of the authorities, perhaps linked to his controversial statements on the media “Frontières” on YouTube, widely reported by the Moroccan media.

Did his comments “undermine territorial integrity”?

France, he explained, did not colonize Morocco, “because it’s a big state. (…) It's easy to colonize small things that have no history, but colonizing a state is very difficult.”. Undoubtedly more serious in the eyes of the Algerian authorities was the resumption of the Moroccan discourse on the supposedly truncated geography of the Kingdom for the benefit of its North African rival: “When France colonized Algeria, the entire western part of Algeria was part of Morocco: Tlemcen, Oran and even as far as Mascara (…). When France colonized Algeria, it established itself as a protectorate in Morocco and decided, arbitrarily, to attach all of eastern Morocco to Algeria, by drawing a border. »

For certain observers, the writer had, through these words, crossed a line “red line” in the eyes of the regime, potentially making him liable to prosecution for “attack on territorial integrity”.

Having become French a few months ago, Boualem Sansal counted “settling in France”according to Xavier Driencourt. “He found that Algeria was becoming unbreathable. I even started looking for a house for him”he adds. The former diplomat, who has become a critic of the Algerian regime, sees in the arrest of Mr. Sansal a way, for Algiers, of “test France” with whom relations have been frozen since Emmanuel Macron recognized “Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara”.