Overview

• On July 1, the Algiers appeals court upheld Boualem Sansal’s five-year sentence for threatening national unity and Christophe Gleizes’s seven-year term for propaganda offences.
• Presidential decrees published July 4 granted clemency to thousands of inmates but explicitly exempted convictions tied to national unity charges.
• Sansal, who is 80 and battling prostate cancer, opted not to file a cassation appeal, making an individual presidential grace his only hope.
• France’s foreign ministry condemned the exclusions as “incomprehensible and unjustified” and renewed calls for a humanitarian gesture.
• The decision deepens the worst diplomatic rift between Paris and Algiers since 1962, rooted in last year’s Western Sahara autonomy dispute.