This is an interview that promises to be especially researched. Released on November 12 after a year of detention in Algeria for “undermining national unity”, and returning to France this Tuesday, French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal will speak publicly for the first time this Sunday, November 23. The 81-year-old writer chose the filming location for Laurent Delahousse’s film at 8 p.m. news on France 2 to break the silence, and look back at his year behind bars.
This exclusive intervention was eagerly awaited as the novelist and essayist has not spoken since his arrest on November 16, 2024 at Algiers airport. At trial, he was sentenced to five years in prison following comments in the right-wing media “Frontières”, in which he believed that Algeria inherited French colonial territory that previously, according to him, belonged to Morocco.
His detention was widely commented on. His family has expressed serious concerns about his living conditions in prison, while the writer is being treated for prostate cancer. Several Nobel Prize winners for literature, such as Annie Ernaux, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio and Salman Rushdie, have signed a column in Kamel Daoud’s Goncourt calling for his release.
German mediation
This belief emerged in the context of hostilities between Paris and Algeria, the two countries having been involved for more than a year in an unprecedented diplomatic crisis that resulted in the expulsion of civil servants on both sides, the recall of ambassadors and restrictions on diplomatic visa holders.
The author was released late Tuesday, thanks to the mediation of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who called his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune. Soon after he was released from prison, Boualem Sansal was transferred to Berlin where he received medical treatment, before returning to France earlier this week. He was then received by the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron.
In its press release, the Élysée considered that his release “was a moment of emotion and joy,” “able to be carried out through methods based on respect, calm and demands.” And the presidency welcomed “the commitment of the German President”, as well as “the decision taken by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. »
