“Facebook pages and activists announced that a special plane from Germany had landed in Algiers to pick up poet Mohamed Tadjadit.” Ironically, Algerian director Bachir Derrais reacted to the presidential pardon announced on Wednesday in favor of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal. After almost a year behind bars, the novelist is now free and will immediately leave for Germany. However, in Algeria, this eight year old man is still in the spotlight of many people.
For Bachir Derrais, the difference is stark. On the one hand, Sansal’s release, obtained thanks to high-level German mediation for humanitarian reasons, and on the other, the five-year prison sentence of the young poet from Hirak, Mohamed Tadjadit, on Tuesday. “Imagine some prisoner of conscience, with a piece of bread in his left hand and a portion of Laughing Cow in his right, found on ENTV’s 8pm show. (Algerian public television channel, editor’s note) the official version of the news. A sharp contrast between two realities in the same country,” he exclaimed.
