ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — A court in Algeria on Tuesday upheld Franco-Algerian author Boualem Sansal’s five-year prison sentence in a case that has raised alarm over freedom of expression in Algeria and pushed tensions with France to the brink.
Prosecutors at an appeal hearing last week requested the maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The “2084: The End of the World” author was charged in March under Algeria’s anti-terrorism laws and convicted of “undermining national unity,” receiving his initial five-year sentence then.
Sansal’s appeal was closely watched in both France and Algeria. It caps a saga that has turned the novelist into a unlikely cause célèbre, uniting francophone writers, members of France’s far right and European lawmakers in a rare chorus demanding his release.
The issue arose last year when, in an interview with a French right-wing media outlet, Sansal questioned Algeria’s current borders, arguing that France had redrawn them during the colonial period to include lands that once belonged to Morocco. The 80-year-old dual citizen was arrested the following month and later lambasted by the president in a speech to Algeria’s parliament.
The case has unfolded at a historic low point in Algeria’s relations with France, which were strained further over the disputed Western Sahara.
The territorial dispute has long helped shape Algeria’s foreign policy, with its backing of the Polisario Front, a pro-independence group that operates out of refugee camps in southwestern Algeria. France last year shifted its longstanding position to back Morocco’s sovereignty plan.
Analysts say that Sansal has become collateral damage in the broader diplomatic fallout and describe the charges as a political lever Algiers is deploying against Paris.
Sansal’s supporters hope military-backed President Abdelmadjid Tebboune will grant a pardon on Saturday, when Algeria marks Independence Day and traditionally frees selected prisoners as part of a national amnesty.
The timing is dire, supporters warn, as Sansal battles prostate cancer and has spent part of his detention in a prison hospital.
The case has split opinion in Algeria, where many see no place for writers in prison, while others view Sansal’s comments about the country’s borders as a provocation and an affront to their patriotism.
French officials have urged Algeria to release him, with President Emmanuel Macron appealing directly to Tebboune to pardon Sansal during a March phone call, citing the writer’s age and failing health as reason for mercy.
