The 75-year-old Franco-Algerian author, Boualem Sansal, was arrested last Saturday, November 16 at Algiers airport, coming from France. This Thursday, November 21, Emmanuel Macron indicated that he was “very concerned” by his disappearance.
Emmanuel Macron expressed his unwavering attachment to “the freedom of a great writer and intellectual”. Last Saturday, Franco-Algerian author Boualem Sansal, aged 75, was arrested at Algiers airport, coming from France, for unknown reasons. According to our colleagues at Marianne, he has “no longer given any news to his loved ones since his arrival in Algiers”. A situation that concerns the French president.
“State services are mobilized to clarify his situation,” said Thursday, November 21, the entourage of the tenant of the Élysée, adding that the latter expressed “his unwavering attachment to the freedom of a great writer and intellectual” .
Several French political leaders have expressed their concern and support for the writer, known for his speeches against the Algerian power or religious fundamentalism, since he launched into literature in 1999.
“He embodies everything we cherish: the call to reason, freedom and humanism against censorship, corruption and Islamism,” wrote Edouard Philippe on X, Thursday, November 21.
The former Prime Minister said he was counting on the “French and European authorities to obtain precise information and ensure that he can move freely and return to France whenever he wishes.”
The leader of the deputies of the National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen, asked the French government to “act to obtain the immediate release” of Boualem Sansal, saluting a “freedom fighter and courageous opponent of Islamism “.
France's complicated relationship with Algeria
From his beginnings, the septuagenarian who obtained French nationality this year met with success with “The Oath of the Barbarians”, a novel recounting the rise in power of fundamentalists which contributed to plunging his country into a civil war which caused at least 200,000 deaths between 1992 and 2002.
Although his books are sold freely in Algeria, the author is controversial there, particularly since a visit to Israel in 2014.
Kamel Daoud, a controversial Franco-Algerian writer in Algeria, accused by a victim of the civil war of having exploited his story, spoke in the columns of Le Figaro this Thursday, November 21. “I very much hope that my friend Boualem will return to us very soon,” he said in a column, confiding his incomprehension in the face of the “imprudence” which, according to him, Boualem Sansal would have shown by going to Algeria.
These events take place in a tense diplomatic context between France and Algeria, after Paris' support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the disputed territory of Western Sahara at the end of July. This former Spanish colony, partly controlled by Morocco, is claimed by the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, who are demanding a self-determination referendum and are supported by Algiers.
“This arbitrary arrest comes four weeks after Emmanuel Macron's trip to Morocco, which marked the president's reconciliation with Mohammed VI, at the same time as the distance with the government of Algiers, when the head of state recognized as Moroccan Western Sahara. Is Boualem Sansal the revenge of Algiers? And why not a bargaining chip with France?” asked Pascal Braud in his editorial this Friday, November 22.
