Overview

• On July 1, an Algerian appeals court upheld Sansal’s five-year prison sentence for “undermining national unity.”
• President Tebboune’s July 5 Independence Day decrees explicitly barred convicts of national unity offenses, excluding Sansal from a mass pardon.
• The 80-year-old writer, who has cancer, remains confined in Koléa prison under harsh conditions without any immediate prospect of release.
• France has lobbied for a humanitarian pardon and is considering invoking the EU-Algeria association agreement to press its demands.
• French cultural figures, led by Jack Lang’s planned readings at the Festival d’Avignon, have mobilized public solidarity and petitions for Sansal’s freedom.