French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal on Tuesday returned to France after a year-long imprisonment in Algeria that further strained troubled ties between Paris and its former colony, supporters and the French presidency said.Sansal, 81, travelled to France from Germany where he had been receiving medical treatment following his release last week brokered in talks between Algiers and Berlin.His novels warning of the risks of creeping authoritarianism but also Islamisation have made him a favourite on the right in France but deeply unpopular with the authorities in his country of birth. Upon arriving in France, Sansal was welcomed by President Emmanuel Macron in a meeting at the Elysee Palace, the French presidency said.Macron, it said, is “delighted at the release of Mr Sansal, a great writer whose dignity, moral strength and courage have been exemplary”.His committee of supporters who campaigned for his release said in a statement they welcomed “with deep emotion the return to France of our friend and compatriot”.”It will now be up to the writer to choose the time and fashion in which he wishes to express himself,” it added.His detention was seen by supporters as a consequence of a political row between Algeria and France over sovereignty of the territory of the Western Sahara, where Paris backs the claim of Algiers’ north African rival Morocco.Algeria handed Sansal a five-year jail term in March on charges of undermining its territorial integrity after arresting him in November last year on arrival from France.In October 2024, Sansal told a far-right French media outlet that France had unjustly transferred Moroccan territory to Algeria during the 1830-1962 colonial period.Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune pardoned Sansal last week after German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged a “humanitarian gesture” due to his fragile health.Even after Sansal’s release, prominent French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes remains in an Algerian prison, sentenced to seven years for “glorifying terrorism” for having sought to interview an outlawed group.France is “fervently hoping for” the release of Gleizes and “we are working towards it”, the French presidency said.The support committee of Sansal for its part urged the “immediate release” of Gleizes.French-Algerian relations have been shadowed by numerous political disputes over the last years. But analysts say both sides have also yet to overcome the mutual recriminations left by the long 1954-1962 war that brought Algeria independence, as well as the legacy of over a century of French colonisation.
