Imprisoned for more than seven months, the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal hoped, like relatives, including his two daughters, a grace on the occasion of the 63ᵉ anniversary of the independence of Algeria, Saturday July 5. But in a press release, the Algerian presidency announced, Friday 4, a grace for several thousand people, adding that people would be excluded from this measure “Definitely condemned” For a whole series of offenses, including the damage to the territorial unity. However, Mr. Sansal, 80, was found guilty of involvement in national unit and sentenced to five years in prison, a verdict confirmed on Tuesday on appeal.
The president of the court told him that he had eight days to form an appeal in cassation. Questioned by the Agency France-Presse, the new French lawyer for the writer, Pierre Cornut-Gentille, said at the end of the hearing that he was going to discuss with his client of this possibility. François Bayrou had also said to hope “Grace measures” presidential, by qualifying his situation as” intolerable “.
Mr. Sansal, suffering from prostate cancer according to his relatives, was sentenced in March at first instance for having declared last October to the French far -right media Boundaries That Algeria had inherited, under French colonization, of territories belonging hitherto in Morocco, particularly the cities of Oran and Mascara, located in the west of Algeria.
Boualem Sansal is the subject of a harsh diplomatic fight between Algeria and France since its arrest when it arrived in Algiers on November 16. This affair has pointed out a quarrel between Paris and Algiers, born in July 2024 of the recognition by France of an autonomy plan “Under Moroccan sovereignty” For Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco has been competed for fifty years and the separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers. The crisis was marked by expulsions of diplomats on both sides and a freezing of all cooperation.
