Algeria accuses Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal of “undermining the integrity” of the State

MADRID 26 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Algerian authorities have accused the French Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, detained at the Algiers airport upon his return from France, of “undermining the integrity of the national territory” after making controversial comments about the colonization of the country.

The Algiers Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office interrogated the writer before he was detained on November 16 at the airport by members of the Algerian General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) and placed in preventive detention.

“He is in good health. He has appealed his arrest order,” a judicial source explained about Sansal, who remains imprisoned in the Koléa prison, west of the capital, Algiers, according to the French newspaper ‘Le Monde’. .

Sansal has been charged under article 87 of the Penal Code, which includes “terrorist or subversive acts against the security of the State, the integrity of the territory and the stability and normal functioning of institutions”, for which the writer faces a possible sentence of life imprisonment.

His arrest, shrouded in a halo of secrecy, was indirectly confirmed by the state news agency APS, which in an article described the writer as a “pseudo-intellectual revered by the French extreme right”, although neither the Algerian nor the French Government They have spoken about it.

The delegate minister in charge of the French abroad, Sophie Primas, assured this Tuesday before the National Assembly when asked about the case that “diplomacy needs discretion to act.” “At this point, I can’t tell you more,” he added.

Sansal warns in one of his novels, ‘2084. The end of the world’, about the dangers of Islamism, using as an example the imagined empire of Abistan, where a totalitarian regime has as its emblems submission to a single god and collective amnesia.

Relations between Algeria and France have not been going well since Paris recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the territory of Western Sahara, a step that even led Algiers to lower diplomatic relations to the level of chargé d’affaires and withdraw its ambassador in retaliation.