France’s Emmanuel Macron has joined the call for information about French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, who went missing after flying to Algiers last Saturday.
Sansal, an outspoken critic of the Algerian regime, was reportedly arrested by Algerian police as he stepped off the plane, according to some French media.
“The president is very concerned and is following the situation closely,” a spokesperson for the Elysée Palace said. “He attaches great importance to the freedom of this great writer and intellectual.”
Several other prominent French politicians, mainly from the center and right, have expressed fear of Sansal, who has appeared regularly in the French media criticizing both the Algerian government and the rise of Islamism.
There was no official response to French concerns in Algeria on Friday.
Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said he was “deeply concerned… [Sansal] embodies everything we cherish. He stands for reason, freedom and humanism against the forces of censorship, corruption and Islamism.”
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen called him a “fighter for freedom and a courageous opponent of Islamism.”
The disappearance of Sansal, 75, was first reported by friends in Paris, who discovered his mobile phone was dead and were told he had not arrived at his home in Boumerdès.
Among his supporters is the writer Kamel Daoud, another French-Algerian critic of the government in Algiers, who earlier this month won France’s best book prize for a novel about the bloody Algerian civil war of the 1990s.
Only this week it was announced that Daoud was charged in Algeria with stealing his story from a civil war survivor, and with violating a 2005 “reconciliation law” that limits public commentary on the conflict.
Saada Arbane said she had several psychiatric sessions with Daoud’s future wife, Aicha Dahdouh. The BBC has approached Daoud for comment.
Saada Arbane said she refused to meet Kamel Daoud when she found out he wanted to use her as the basis for his book [Getty Images]
In an article published on Friday in Paris, where he now lives, Daoud expressed concern about his “friend” Sansal, who he was sure had been arrested.
“Being a writer in Algeria is a tough job. The regime does not value the profession at all and the Islamists are in expansion mode…. The armed wing indeed [of the Islamists] is the regime,” he wrote.
The difficulties faced by the two writers have fueled fears of a vendetta to be waged by the Algerian government in response to an apparent turn in President Macron’s policy towards friendship with Morocco, and away from Algeria.
Antoine Gallimard, of Daoud’s publishing house Gallimard, said the lawsuits against the writer were evidence of a “campaign of violent defamation, orchestrated by certain media close to the (Algerian) regime.”
Last month, Macron made a state visit to Morocco, where he expressed French support for Moroccan claims of sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Algeria is the historical mainstay of the Polisario independence movement.
Macron’s move angered many Algerians, who see the awarding of the French Prix Goncourt to Daoud as a political rather than a literary gesture.
Elysée officials have told journalists that Macron was frustrated by his repeated attempts to build bridges to Algeria, which continually failed due to Algerian opposition.
Some French media speculated that Sansal had been arrested in connection with a recent interview in which he appeared to question Algeria’s historical sovereignty over parts of its territory bordering Morocco. He also said that Polisario was “invented” by Algeria to “destabilize Morocco.”
Over the years, Daoud and Sansal have both attracted the ire of official circles in Algeria, where they are regularly accused of selling out to the former colonial power.
Sansal trained as a scientist and held a high position in the Algerian Ministry of Industry before leaving his job after the publication of his first novels. He came under intense attack for attending a book fair in Jerusalem in 2012.
Daoud, 54, started his career as a journalist covering the civil war massacres that left up to 200,000 people dead.
He became a newspaper columnist and gained international fame in 2015 with his first novel The Meursault investigationan adaptation of Albert Camus’ The Stranger.
Additional reporting by Ahmed Rouaba.
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