French president Emmanuel Macron has called on Algeria to free Boualem Sansal, after the French-Algerian novelist was on Thursday sentenced to five years in prison and fined for allegedly undermining Algeria’s territorial integrity.
Sansal was arrested on 16 November at Algiers airport on arrival from Paris, after saying in an interview with a far-right French media outlet Frontières that France unfairly ceded Moroccan territory to Algeria during the colonial era.
