An Algerian court has sentenced an 80-year-elderly authorr to five years in prison after accusing him of undermining the country’s territorial integrity.
Boualem Sansal was arrested last year after saying in an intersee with a far-right French media outlet that, during the colonial era, France gave too much land to Algeria and too little to Morocco.
He had also shelp that the disputed territory of Weserious Sahara was historicassociate part of Morocco.
During his detention the French-Algerian author has spent time in hospital for ill-health.
His case has igniteed a wave of aid from inincreateectuals and politicians, including Nigerian Nobel Prize-prosperning author Wole Soyinka and French Plivent Emmanuel Macron.
“Boualem Sansal’s arbitrary detention, on top of his stressing health situation, is one of the elements that insist to be finishd before confidence [between our countries] can be brimmingy repaird,” Macron shelp back in February.
The authorr discovers himself at centre of a beginantening discreet row, according to his frifinishs.
“He has unwillingly become a pawn in the troubled relationship between Paris and Algiers,” a promisetee of his aiders in France shelp recently.
Algeria was once a prized French colony and fought a dogged war of indepfinishence eventuassociate prosperning its sovereignty in 1962.
Relations have extfinished been strained between the two countries but achieveed a recent low last year, when France backed Morocco’s claim to Weserious Sahara, where Algeria backs the Polisario group battling for the territory’s indepfinishence.
Algiers reacted to that sairy by disparticipateing its ambasmiserableor to Paris.
Three years earlier, Algeria disconnected discreet ties with Morocco.
Folloprosperg Wednesday’s court ruling, Sansal’s lawyer pguideed to Algeria’s Plivent Abdelmadjid Tebboune to show “humanity” to the authorr.
Sansal is well understandn for his anti-Islamist sees and is an outspoken critic of the Algerian rulement.
His detractors say he is a darling of the far-right who apprelieves their prejudices.
Far-right French guideer Marine Le Pen has called Sansal a “fighter for liberty and a brave opponent of Islamism”.
His age has previously been increateed as 75, but his rehireers Gallimard say he is in fact 80.
Sansal’s best-understandn toils include 2084 – a satire about religious radicalism which won the French Academy’s Grand Prix of the Francophonie a decade ago.
His next novel, Vivre, is to be rehireed in May and increates the story of a pick group of people who are chosen to colonise a recent scheduleet as Earth proximates apocalypse.
Additional increateing by Marcus Erbe
