Boualem SANSAL

Image Credit: ActuaLitté/WikkiCommons

Award-winning French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, 81, was released in November 2025 after receiving a presidential pardon from President Tebboune, following a year in prison on national security charges. Sansal arrived in Germany on 12 November 2025 to receive medical treatment following his release.  

In March 2025, a court in Dar El Beida, near Algiers, sentenced Sansal to five years in prison and a fine of DZD500,000 (approximately USD3,730) after he was convicted of national security-related charges. He had declared a hunger strike in February in protest over his unjust imprisonment, as his health had been deteriorating in custody. In July, after a hearing where he appeared in court without legal counsel, an appeal court upheld his prison sentence and fine, rejecting the Algerian prosecutor’s attempt to double Sansal’s jail term. 

Sansal had been arrested upon arrival at Algiers airport in November 2024, and his whereabouts remained unknown for over a week, during which he was denied access to his family and legal counsel (see Case List 2025).  

Sansal, born in Algeria on 15 October 1949, was granted French citizenship in 2024. Previously a government official, he began writing at the age of 50 and is the author of  2084: La fin du monde (2084: The End of the World, 2015) for which he received the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française and the prize-winning 2008 novel Le village de l'Allemand ou le journal des frères Schiller  (translated into English as An Unfinished Business), among several other remarkable novels published by Gallimard. He received the Prix du Premier Roman  and the Prix Tropiques for his debut novel Le serment des barbares (The Barbarians' Oath) in 1999, and the Arab Novel Prize for his novel Rue Darwin (2011) in 2012. Sansal was also awarded the German Book Trade Peace Prize in 2011, and honoured with the Grand Prix de la Francophonie from the Académie Française in 2013.