After displaying the muscles, Bruno Retailleau chooses caution. The day of the appeal judgment of the writer Franco-Algerio Boalem Sansal, imprisoned in Algeria for more than seven months and in the heart of a serious diplomatic struggle between Paris and Algiers, the Interior Minister is walking on eggs this Tuesday, July 1.
Supporter of a “line of firmness”, as he recognizes in France Inter, Bruno Retilleau puts water in his wine. The tone is much less offensive, just as the minister gradually delayed the subject, while Quai d’Orsay had distanced himself from the line that advocated Beauvau to try to transfer an appeasement.
“He will understand that at this time I do not want to spoil any possibility, even the slightest opportunity, make sure that Boalem Sansal), explains Bruno Retailleau to justify his change of foot.
“I only remember that he is 80 years old, who is sick (he has prostate cancer, according to his relatives, note of the editor),” he said.
Along the same lines, Iric Ciotti, head of the deputies of UDR and Allied with Marine Le Pen, had chosen last Thursday to withdraw from the National Assembly, its resolution aimed to finish the 1968 agreements between Paris and Algiers that facilitate the arrival of Algerian nationals.
“Even a stormy story should not justify omerta”
If you choose to advance in moderation, Bruno Retailleau defends its initial strategy. “I have always considered that even a stormy story should not justify omerta. I really believe that when two countries have relationships, agreements, the agreements must be reciprocal. It is the lack of reciprocity that I have played,” he said about France Inter.
The president of the Les Répudicins party indirectly disputes the line of the quai d’Orsay, judging that “the great discretion” with respect to the journalist Christopheis was sentenced to seven years in prison for “apologies for terrorism”, as journalists revealed without teasing on Sunday, it did not work.
On Monday, France deplored “the strong condemnation” of the French journalist, reaffirming his attachment to freedom of the press without calling Algiers to be released in the context of the exacerbated crisis between the two countries.
Boalem Sansal, was sentenced on March 27 to five years in prison in the first instance, in particular for statements in October 2024 in the French media of the borders of the right, where he estimated that Algeria had inherited under the French colonization of territories that belong until now in Morocco.
He was accused of “damage to the national unity”, “outrage of the constituted body”, “practices that probably damage the national economy” and the “arrest of videos and publications that threaten the security and stability of the country”.
Unprecedented diplomatic crisis
The Sansal issue indicated a dispute between Paris and Algiers launched in July 2024 for the recognition of France of an autonomy plan “under the Moroccan sovereignty” for the Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco and the separatists of the Polisario have been competed for 50 years, backed by Algiers.
Since then, the two countries have been going through an unprecedented diplomatic crisis, marked by expulsions of diplomats on both sides, restrictions for diplomatic visas and freezing of all cooperation.
Until now, the multiple liberation requests of Boalem Sansal or a grace of the Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune, “a gesture of humanity” claimed by the French president Emmanuel Macron in person, has remained a dead letter.
However, some relatives of the author had the hope of being forgiven on the occasion of July 5, marking the 63rd anniversary of the independence of Algeria.
Source: BFM TV
