Algiers responds to the French president who, Monday January 6, spoke about the detention of Boualem Sansal since last November. A detention “dishonoring” the country, according to Emmanuel Macron. “Unacceptable interference” for the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Algiers rejected, this Tuesday, January 7, as “unacceptable interference in an internal Algerian matter” statements by French President Emmanuel Macron on Algeria, in which he affirmed that this country “dishonors itself” by keeping the writer in prison. Franco-Algerian Boualem Sansal.
The day before, during his speech to French ambassadors around the world, Emmanuel Macron called for Algiers to be liberated.
“Remarks from the French president which dishonor, above all, the one who thought it necessary to make them in such a casual and light manner. These remarks can only be reproached, rejected and condemned for what they are, a shameless and unacceptable interference in an internal Algerian matter,” the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
“What the French president unduly and falsely presents as a matter of freedom of expression is not one with regard to the law of a sovereign and independent State. It essentially concerns a questioning of the integrity territorial territory of the country, an offense punishable by Algerian law,” added the Algerian ministry in its press release.
Boualem Sansal, a “freedom fighter”
“The Algeria that we love so much and with which we share so many children and so many stories is entering into a story that dishonors it, preventing a seriously ill man from getting treatment. that she is,” he said in front of the ambassadors gathered at the Élysée.
“I urge his government to release Boualem Sansal“, he added. This “freedom fighter” is “detained in a totally arbitrary manner by Algerian officials”, according to Emmanuel Macron.
Critic of Algerian power, Boualem Sansal, 75, has been incarcerated since mid-November for endangering state security, after his arrest upon his arrival at Algiers airport, and is in a care unit since mid-December.
According to the French daily Le Monde, the Algerian government would have taken badly statements by Boualem Sansal to the French media Frontières, reputed to be far-right, taking up Morocco's position according to which the country's territory would have been truncated under French colonization for the benefit of Algeria.
What happened to Boualem Sansal, the Franco-Algerian writer at the heart of a conflict between the two countries?
The author of “2084: the end of the world”, naturalized 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 , territorial integrity, stability and normal functioning of institutions”.
