The verdict in a legal case that has been stirring up diplomatic tensions between Algeria and France for several months was delivered in a brief statement read out on the morning of Thursday, March 27, by the judge of the court of Dar El-Beïda, near Algiers. The French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, arrested on November 16 in Algeria and placed in pre-trial detention, was sentenced to five years in prison and fined 500,000 dinars (€3,470), the judge announced in Arabic, in the presence of the writer, who remained impassive and approached the magistrate to inform him that he had not fully understood the sentence. The latter then repeated, out loud and in French, the sentence that had been handed down to him.

The possible scenario of a life sentence has therefore been ruled out. The charges against him were extremely serious. Sansal, who is accused by the Algiers regime of having made comments in the far-right French magazine Frontières about Western Algeria belonging to Morocco, was prosecuted under Article 87 bis of the Algerian Penal code for undermining state security, territorial integrity and institutional stability. He was later served with another charge, that of colluding with foreign parties. In particular, he was accused of having provided "sensitive information and intelligence of a security and economic nature" to the former French ambassador to Algeria, Xavier Driencourt.

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