The writer Franco Algelino Boalem Sansal has been sentenced this Thursday in Algiers to a five -year prison sentence and a fine of 3,470 euros. The Prosecutor’s Office asked for 10 years for “attempting against the integrity of the State” after statements in a French environment. Sansal, who chose to defend himself because he could not contact his lawyers, had been in provisional prison since mid -November 2024. When he heard the sentence in Arab The world.
Cancer patient and 75 years in the Civil Registry (although its real age can be around 80), Sansal is one of the most important, translated and read in the French language. His critical voice against the Government of Algeria, of which he was high official in the past, in statements to a French media, led to a process marked by secretism.
The open case against him derives from his arrest at the Algiers airport after the publication of an interview in a French environment of ultra -right -wing trend in which he said that Paris gave Moroccan territory to Algeria during the colonial era, words considered by Algiers as an affront to his national sovereignty.
Sansal, nationalized French a year ago, has seen how his judgment became the scene of a political struggle in one of the most tense moments of relations between Algeria and France, the old colonial power. His main lawyer, the French lawyer François Zimeray, considered at the beginning of the month at a press conference that Sansal had been used as a “host” and “Turk’s head” in the crossfire of the diplomatic conflict that emerged after the implicit recognition of Paris of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, the Spanish ex -colony whose self -determination defends Algiers through its support for its support for its support for its support for its support. Polisario