The global literary community has also reacted in horror. Two winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, France’s Annie Ernaux and Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk, have publicly called on Algeria to release Sansal, as has Salman Rushdie.
Sansal’s main support group says the author — who in 2015 was awarded one of France’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Grand prix du roman de Académie Française — has been in and out of hospital since the beginning of the ordeal.
“Sansal is very ill and we don’t know if he has access to a doctor in jail,” said Noëlle Lenoir, a former French government minister serving as the president of the group. “We are very worried because we have very little news about him. We think he’s detained in isolation and deprived of his telephone.”
While France has repeatedly called for the writer’s release, Sansal’s advocates worry Paris’ efforts will fall on deaf ears given the tension between the two countries.
The decision to side with Morocco in the Western Sahara dispute effectively put an end to French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to heal the wounds with Algeria that have festered since the former French colony’s brutal war of independence in the 1950s.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune viewed the move as “a betrayal,” according to a French official who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
