A court in Algeria on Thursday sentenced an award-winning French-Algerian writer to five years in prison. The case against 76-year-old Boualem Sansal has become a flashpoint in growing tensions between the Algerian and French governments.
Sansal was arrested in November and stood trial for undermining Algeria's territorial integrity.
A court in Dar El Beida, near Algiers, sentenced "the defendant in his presence to a five-year prison term" with a fine of 500,000 Algerian dinars ($3,730).
Last week, prosecutors at an Algiers court requested a 10-year prison sentence for the novelist whose work has remained available in Algeria despite his criticism of the government.
Though Sansal was relatively unknown in France before his arrest, the trial has sparked a wave of support from French intellectuals and officials.
French President Emmanuel Macron has dismissed the accusations against Sansal as "not serious", but had expressed confidence in Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune's "clarity of vision" on the matter.
Macron has repeatedly called for the writer's release, citing his fragile state of health due to cancer.
Sansal's French lawyer, Francois Zimeray, condemned the decision in a post on X as "a sentence that betrays the very meaning of the word justice.
"His age and his health make every day he spends in jail even more inhuman. I appeal to the Algerian presidence: justice has failed, let humanity at least prevail."
According to his French publisher, Sansal is 80 years old.
France's Foreign Ministry said later Thursday that it was disappointed in the verdict and called for a “rapid, humanitarian and dignified” resolution to the case.
