Why is there no campaign to free novelist Boualem Sansal?

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Paul Wood

I was convinced by the cholesterol sceptics

What possible crime has the award-winning novelist Boualem Sansal committed that merits being locked away for three months now by the Algerian police?

Listen to the Algerian government – and its cheerleaders on social media – and theanswer appears to be that he is at best a stooge for the French far right, at worst an outright traitor. Friends of the man paint another picture: a gently spoken free-thinker with the courage to speak his mind.

Sansal, who is 80 and suffers from cancer, was arrested at Algiers airport on 16 November as he got off a plane from Paris. He has been in an Algiers prison ever since, with visits to hospital for treatment. His Parisian lawyer, François Zimeray, has still not been given a visa, so the charges are unclear. What is known is that they fall under Article 87 of the Algerian penal code, which treats as terrorism any ‘act aimed against the security of the state, and the integrity of its territory’. Conviction carries the death penalty or a long period in jail.

He may be little known around the world, but in France – where he has lived on and off for 20 years – Sansal has become quite a familiar figure. He produced a series of books in French, one of which – 2084: The End of the World – won the 2015 French Academy’s Grand Prix for best novel. And he appeared regularly in the media as a commentator on Algerian and French social affairs. With his grey ponytail, glasses and shabby jackets, he came across as a kind of hybrid Native American maths professor.