Outrage mounts over arrest of writer Boualem Sansal in Algiers

The Algerian regime has confirmed through its news agency the arbitrary arrest of Boualem Sansal, a renowned novelist with a critic of the military regime in Algiers.

In a diatribe on the national news agency APS, the military regime showed its contempt for free writers such as Sansal whom it called “pseudo writer,” while describing the voices that call for his release as pro-zionist and pro-Moroccan.

Sansal, who has dual French and Algerian nationality, disappeared a few days ago upon his arrival in Algiers airport, coming from France where his wife lives.

His arrest outraged writers from across the globe, including Nobel prize winners and the most recent recipient of the Goncourt award Kamal Daoud, who expressed deep concern at the persecution of Sansal.

“Freedom of expression is nothing but a memory in the face of repression, imprisonments, and the surveillance of the entire society,” wrote Kamal Daoud in Le Point after the arrest of his colleague Sansal.

The French political class is also alerting to the erratic nature of the Algerian regime who does not shy away from persecuting free thinkers who derail from the regime’s rhetoric. Some French intellectuals see in the arrest of Sansal a reprisal against France, given Sansal’s stands in support of normal ties with France.

Sansal is an outspoken critic of the military regime in Algiers. His books and interviews offer a critical perspective into post-independence Algeria in which he blames the regime for installing a “Soviet-like regime.”

In an interview recently, he criticized the regime’s tactics in using France as a scapegoat to pin all Algeria’s woes on.

He irked the military rulers when he mentioned the colonial origins of Algeria’s current borders at the expense of historical Moroccan territories.

Sansal also revisited the Algerian civil war, known as the black decade, opposing Islamists to the state, when some 200,000 civilians died. The Algerian state imposes a blackout on that bloody era.

Sansal’s case highlights the regime’s targeting of renowned figures, including artists like Cheb Khaled who is facing a fomented espionage case.