On March 27, 2025, an Algerian court sentenced 75-year-old French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal, a critic of both Islamism and Algeria’s authoritarianism, to five-years in prison, ostensibly for stating in an October 2024 interview with the French online publication Frontières that western Algeria was part of Morocco when France colonized both countries; in reality, Sansal’s real crime appears to be his ties to France at a time Algeria’s leadership grows increasingly frustrated with France’s turn toward Morocco.
“It is quite clear that the Algerian regime is using the writer’s arrest to put pressure on France and [French President] Emmanuel Macron.”
Sansal has also been at the forefront of efforts to normalize relations with Israel, at least on a people-to-people level. His 2008 book Le village de l’Allemand [The German Mujahid] examines the “real-life account—of a Nazi officer who flees to Algeria” and aids the National Liberation Army in their defeat of the French during the war of independence. He subsequently visited Israel to participate in the 2012 Jerusalem Writers Festival. At the time, Hamas denounced Sansal’s visit to Israel. Sansal responded, “I wouldn’t wish Hamas upon my worst enemy. It is a terrorist movement of the worst kind. Hamas has taken Gazans hostage. It has taken Islam hostage.”
Nathalie Szerman, a French-Israeli researcher on Algeria, explained Sansal’s arrest was notable because Algerian security charged him with endangering state security, something he did not do. “It is quite clear that the Algerian regime is using the writer’s arrest to put pressure on France and [French President] Emmanuel Macron,” she argued. By targeting a prominent Algerian who also has French citizenship, “[President Abdelmadjid] Tebboune wants to make it clear that France should not meddle in its affairs and certainly not in territory issues, which are oversensitive ones.”
Algeria is angry. Macron has followed President Donald Trump’s lead by backing Morocco in the conflict with Algeria over Western Sahara. Algeria continues to host and support the Polisario Front, which claims from its camps in Algeria’s Tindouf region that it is the Western Sahara’s legitimate government.
Shortly after Algeria sentenced Sansal, Paris and Algiers expelled each other’s diplomats. In mid-April, Algeria expelled 12 French diplomats, and France retaliated by expelling 12 Algerian diplomats. Algeria has not posted an ambassador in Paris since July 2024 while France’s recalled its ambassador to Algiers in April for consultations.
It should be a U.S. interest, therefore, to signal to Algeria that there will be no business as usual, let alone military cooperation, until it releases Sansal.
Rising tension between Algeria and France and Tebboune’s incompetence prompted the French-Algerian writer Mohamed Sifaoui to question Tebboune’s mental health in an April 22, 2025 tweet. Alongside Salman Rushdie, Sifaoui has championed securing Sansal’s release. However, Algerian persecution of Sansal has garnered scarce attention in in the West. Left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz which seldom publishes on Algeria’s alliance with Iran and Hezbollah, criticized the left’s silence on Sansal’s imprisonment.
While Macron has dismissed the charges against Sansal as “unserious” and called on Tebboune to right the wrong, the United States has been largely silent. The White House ignored Sansal’s arrest as it sought to conclude a Military Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with Algeria, negotiated under Biden but signed two days into the Trump administration.
In 2001, President George W. Bush temporarily withheld more than $100 million in aid to Egypt to compel the release of Egyptian-American sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who had criticized both Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship and the autocracy of the Muslim Brotherhood. In many ways, Sansal’s situation is parallel. Both Algeria’s reactionary and terror-sponsoring dictatorship and its Islamists pose a threat. It should be a U.S. interest, therefore, to signal to Algeria that there will be no business as usual, let alone military cooperation, until it releases Sansal and takes a hands-off approach to other Algerian intellectuals who support liberalism and peace.
