“My father is a kind of hostage.”

The two daughters of the Franco-Algerio Boalem Sansal writer, sentenced to five years in prison, told AFP his “feeling of total impotence”, of the Czech Republic where they live, to obtain the liberation of his father.

He met at the inauguration of the Prague Book Fair, Nawal, 53, and knows, 50, they received a prize for the promotion of freedom of expression awarded to his father.

“It is sad that people are imprisoned for freely expressed their opinion and unfortunately, our father is one of these people,” said the old man after receiving the distinction.

“God only knows in what mental state it is” because he is “isolated without any information”, after deplored with AFP. “The only person who is allowed to visit him is probably his wife, but we don’t know anything,” they observe it, “he added.

While the dissident, achieved by cancer, is currently “radiotherapy treatment”, his daughters have last exchanged by email with him in 2023 and have no news, apart from the press clippings made by the Czech embassy in Algiers.

They sent an open letter to French president Emmanuel Macron and wrote to their Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune. “We also wrote to my father. But we don’t receive an answer, nothing happened,” Nawal said.

“Badge”

Lost before the meanders of the Algerian system, this computer specialist resorted to the Chatgpt of artificial intelligence interface and, in his advice, he plans to contact organizations such as Amnesty International to accentuate the pressure.

Born in Algeria, Boalem Sansal girls lived in Czechoslovakia, their mother’s country, after the early childhood separation of their parents, who had met in the context of a university exchange.

The communist regime was watching them, like all people with family abroad, and if they have spent their vacation in Algiers every year, Nawal has not returned there since he was 20 years old and has not seen his father since then. Her sister and she always live near Prague.

Sansal arrested in November 2024

Arrested in mid -November at the Argier airport, the 80 -year -old writer was sentenced to the integrity of the Algerian territory at the end of March five years in five years in five years.

It is criticized for having assumed the position of Morocco, according to which the territory of this country was tried under French colonization for the benefit of Algeria. He called.

“I think my father is a pawn or an exchange currency, a kind of hostage, because they are probably trying to obtain the release of certain terrorists convicted in France,” he explained to Nawal, his sister knowsha he greeted in him “a true patriot.”

Algeria and France have been going through a diplomatic crisis marked in recent days since last summer for a new series of exhaustion of public officials on both sides last summer. All cooperation is frozen.

Athem, Boalem Sansal is critical of a power that, according to him, has remained for too long against the will of the Algerians. “He completely controls the country and has all the means,” he said in Le Figaro in 2019.