Morocco, Tunisia Eye Reinforcing Cooperation in Vehicles Industry

Morocco, Tunisia Eye Reinforcing Cooperation in Vehicles Industry
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Morocco, Tunisia Eye Reinforcing Cooperation in Vehicles Industry

Morocco, Tunisia Eye Reinforcing Cooperation in Vehicles Industry

Representatives from the business sector in Morocco and Tunisia have expressed their desire to reinforce economic integration between the two countries, especially with the development of the exporting vehicles sector in Morocco and the Tunisian expertise in manufacturing vehicles’ components.

Morocco produces around 400,000 vehicles annually and exports 90 percent of them to Europe, especially Spain and the region of the south of the Mediterranean Sea.

In return, the industry of vehicles’ components is one of the oldest in Tunisia and the most developed in the region – around 90,000 engineers and laborers work in this sector.

Tunisian Minister for Development, Investment and International Cooperation Zied Ladhari said that the authorities and businessmen in Tunisia and Morocco have become convinced more than any time in the necessity of activating the joint bilateral and regional agreements and conventions that enhance cooperation between the two countries.

Ladhari stated to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the Tunisian government is working on developing the economic partnership with Morocco. He noted that the Tunisian and Moroccan authorities and businessmen are not content with the weak performance of trade exchanges of approximately 1 percent of the imports and exports of each country.

The minister called for benefiting from the basic industrial structure of both countries, a matter that offers the opportunity to enhance cooperation and investment, namely in industries of vehicles, food, health, and training, etc.



French-Algerian Author Boualem Sansal Handed Five-year Sentence

A banner in support of detained Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, is displayed on a bridge in Beziers, southern France on March 26, 2025. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)
A banner in support of detained Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, is displayed on a bridge in Beziers, southern France on March 26, 2025. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)
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French-Algerian Author Boualem Sansal Handed Five-year Sentence

A banner in support of detained Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, is displayed on a bridge in Beziers, southern France on March 26, 2025. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)
A banner in support of detained Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, is displayed on a bridge in Beziers, southern France on March 26, 2025. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)

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.