French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, pardoned and released on Wednesday 12 November by Algeria after a year in detention, is “back to France”his support committee announced on Tuesday. “The International Support Committee for Boualem Sansal welcomes with great emotion the return of our friend and compatriot to France”the press release said without providing further details.
“Now it is up to the author to choose the moment and format in which he wants to express himself. The committee will fully respect the time of rest, reconstruction and regained freedom”he added.
After his release, the 81-year-old writer arrived in Berlin to receive medical treatment before returning to France. “Hello France, Boualem will be back, we will win! »he said. Near Point, the author has assured to bring “quite good”. “I’m strong, you know. I won’t break down in just one year in prison.”he said.
The writer was sentenced to five years in prison for “attack on national unity” following comments made in October 2024 to French right-wing media Border. He claimed that Algeria inherited certain territories in the west of the country, especially Oran and Mascara, which he believed previously belonged to Morocco.
The writer, who was imprisoned for a year in Algeria and was at the center of a serious diplomatic crisis between Algiers and Paris, was pardoned and released on Wednesday at the request of the German President, where he was transferred for medical treatment.
On Monday, France’s foreign minister said as much “This liberation is first of all a victory for diplomacy, for French diplomacy, for German diplomacy, and it is a strong rebuff to the supporters of methods of force, brutality and invective that achieve nothing”. For Jean-Noël Barrot, this liberation was a “a scathing rebuttal to proponents of strong methods” in dialogue with Algiers.
