80-year-old Sansal, who has received several international literary awards, was arrested in Algiers in November last year. He was charged with crimes against national security under Article 87 of the Algerian Penal Code. This is a paragraph that has been heavily criticized for being used against regime critics and human rights defenders, according to, among others, Swedish Pen, which has demanded that the charges against him be dropped.
The charges against Sansal came after he said in an interview, among other things, that France had wrongly ceded Moroccan territory to Algeria.
Sansal made his debut at the age of 47 and writes in French. The charges against him have caused large protests and a diplomatic crisis between France and Algeria.
