He Must Go Free: Algeria Detains Acclaimed Author, Denies Lawyer Access

Algeria has charged as a terrorist Boalem Sansal, a former high-ranking Algerian government official, and its most internationally acclaimed writer since Nobel Laureate Albert Camus. Citing his publications and comments to journalists, Algeria has now denied him access to his lawyer Francois Zimeray, saying he is “too Jewish.”

Algeria’s shocking barring of French Jewish Zimeray from meeting his client comes at a time when diplomatic tensions between Algeria and France reached a new crescendo as Algeria refuses to receive 60 Algerian nationals subject to deportation from France for criminal acts and radicalization.

Algeria accuses France of issuing ultimata and forgoing existing procedural channels; France accuses Algeria of breaching international law. Ironically, in a direct rebuke to France, Algeria claims it acts only in the interests of its nationals while categorically denying Sansal access to his rights guaranteed either by France or Algeria.

As a rapidly expanding diplomatic crisis, the tensions between France and Algeria are of acute geopolitical interest to the United States. This coincides with the recent announcement by Sabri Boukadoum, Algerian Ambassador to the U.S., of three working groups tasked with deepening  security partnerships within the U.S Algeria Defense Cooperation agreement, signed in January after years of negotiation.

Algeria charged Sansal, a former engineer in the Ministry of Industry, under Article 87 of their Penal Code defining acts threatening Algerian national security, state integrity or the stability of Algerian institutions as subversion or terrorism.

The United Nations has observed this law is frequently abused to silence human rights defenders. While Algeria has been racked by jihadism, it is increasingly accommodating to quietist Salafiists who have strongholds throughout the nation including in Algiers where Sansal was detained.

Algerian-born Muslim, Sansal, 75, has penned novels including, 2084: The End of the World, and other searing critiques of the hypocrisy and totalitarianism of Islamism and its deepening, corrupt grip upon Algeria. Living in Algeria with his family, his books have been banned in Algeria since 2006.

As a Muslim Arab defying Islamism inside his native Muslim-majority Arab nation, he may soon pay with his life.

The United States needs to offer this intellectual immediate asylum and urgently needed medical care. As deterrent to all sponsors of Islamism and Islamist antisemitism, the U.S. must punish Algeria with sanctions. Many of the world’s leading literary voices, including representatives of PEN America, have appealed for his release

Eliminationist Islamist antisemitism is the central tenet of radical Islam and animates the world’s leading jihadist movements. Radical Islam is a key factor in the wars of the Taliban in Northwest Pakistan, ISIS in Northern Iraq and Hamas on October 7, 2023 in the Gaza Envelope. I have visited the aftermath of these conflicts, met with survivors and, most recently, provided medical testimony to the  British parliament of such Islamist antisemitism.

Sansal wrote the first Arab novel about the Holocaust, The German Mujahid. He wrote of the Arab-Nazi alliances, empathies and collaborations- and the entry point of Nazi ideology into Arab antisemitism which grew in the post- 9/11 Muslim majority and  diaspora communities.

While global experts appear comfortable denouncing far right antisemitism typified by Nazi and Neo-Nazi ideologues, Islamist antisemitism has been shielded by the machinations of Islamists who portray themselves as persecuted religious minorities both in secular liberal democracies and in Muslim majority nations.

They gain further succor by the potent political and judicial shield of Islamophobia mainstreamed since the Iranian Revolution launched the first charge of Islamist blasphemy on acclaimed author Salman Rushdie.

The war launched on Israel by Hamas has been denied and  distorted by the Islamophobic sentiments inverting Hamas into sacred victimhood.

While antisemitism is recognized as lethal to the Jewish people, Global Jewry and the Jewish State, and threatens all humanity, few understand non-Jews can also be targets of antisemitism, as in Sansal’s case.

Non-Jews who defend Jews, Israelis and all Judaism from antisemitism face crushing and sometimes lethal consequences. As an observing Muslim woman publicly writing and speaking about combating Islamism and lethal genocidal Islamist antisemitism for decades, I have been a target of virulent antisemitism.

As an American and British citizen, my governments guarantee my rights of expression wherever I speak, publish or broadcast, particularly the protections of Free Speech under the U.S. constitution.

For Sansal, the stakes are much higher.

Now held in a prison unit in an Algerian hospital, [QA1]  Sansal faces the full force of state-sanctioned Islamist antisemitism. Imprisoned, with his prostate cancer progressing, his elderly Algerian wife is powerless to intervene and his defense counsel is unable to see him. Sansal is now on hunger strike as a means of protest.

Algeria is aligned with Arab boycott nations. It has no diplomatic relations with Israel and Algeria enshrines anti-normalization laws. In some Arab nations, the crime of engaging with Israel can be punished by revocation of citizenship, imprisonment and death.

Following the Abraham Accords which neighboring Morrocco joined, Algeria closed its border and airspace to Morrocco, intensified its anti-Israel stance and in direct defiance deepened its ties with Iran.

Sansal, a citizen of France and one of the world’s leading intellectuals, must not be further victimized for the prowess of his ideals. He must go free.

Dr. Qanta A. Ahmed, Senior Fellow, Independent Women’s Forum; Life Member, Council on Foreign Relations @MissDiagnosis