The French-Algerian writer was locked up via Morocco comments

An Algerian court sentenced an 80-year-old writer 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 interview with a right -wing extremist French media company that France gave Algeria and Morocco too much land in the colonial era.

He also said that the controversial area of ​​the western Sahara was historically part of Morocco.

The French-Algerian author spent time in the hospital for illness during his detention.

His case has triggered a wave of the support of intellectuals and politicians, including the Nigerian Nobel Prize author Wole Soyinka and French President Emmanuel Macron.

“In addition to his worrying health situation, boualem sansal is one of the elements that must be completely restored before trust (between our countries),” said Macron in February.

According to his friends, the writer is in the center of an in -depth diplomatic series.

“He involuntarily became a farmer in the troubled relationship between Paris and Algiers,” said a committee of his followers in France recently.

Algeria was once an estimated French colony and in 1962 had a stubborn war of independence, which finally won her sovereignty.

Relationships have long been burdened between the two countries, but reached a new low last year when France supported Morocco on Western Sahara, where Algeria supports the Polisario Group, which is fighting for the independence of the territory.

Algiers reacted to the easy by pulling his ambassador back to Paris.

Three years earlier, Algeria separated diplomatic relationships with Morocco.

According to the court ruling on Wednesday, Sansal’s lawyer advocated Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to show the writer “Humanity”.

Sansal is known for its anti-Islamist views and a pronounced critic of the Algerian government.

His critics say that he is a favorite of the right -wing extremist who appeases her prejudices.

The right -wing extremist French guide Marine Le Pen has described Sansal as “fighter for freedom and brave opponents of Islamism”.

His age was previously reported as 75, but his publisher Gallimard said that he was actually 80.

The best known works of Sansal include 2084 – a satire about religious radicalism that won the Grand Prize of the French Academy of Francophonia a decade ago.

His next novel, Vivre, is published in May and tells the story of a selected group of people who are selected to colonize a new planet when the earth approaches the apocalypse.

Additional reporting by Marcus Erbe