The call to the liberation of Christopheizes is not weakened. For four months, the French sports journalist has been arrested in Algeria, sentenced to seven years in prison after 13 months judicial supervision, for “apologies for terrorism” and “possession of publications with the purpose of propaganda damage the national interest.”
The mother’s mother and stepfather were able to visit him for the first time in prison.
“I was surprised by his physical appearance,” said his mother, Sylvie Godard, to BFMTV. “I had a shaved skull, it has no more beard … it is surprised.”
Since the beginning of the case, Christopheize’s relatives have denounced an empty file. The latter is based in particular on the contacts that the journalist had in 2015 and 2017, with the head of the Tizi Ouzou Football Club, also responsible for the movement for the self -determination of Kabylia (MAK). The MAK was classified as a terrorist organization by the Algerian authorities in 2021, according to journalists without Frontières.
France “mobilized to obtain its launch”
His parents believe that Christopheizes is also a collateral victim of the crisis between Paris and Algiers. “With Christophe, let’s repeat it strongly, we fight for press freedom.”
From his arrest in May 2024, while preparing a report for the magazine SO Foot, several people and the media mobilized to demand the release of the journalist. On July 1, after the announcement of his sentence, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that France was “by his side.”
“We were very surprised by his extremely strong sentence in the first instance and we will mobilize to obtain his release,” he said in front of the deputies in the National Assembly.
A wave of solidarity and a promise of action of the State that were transmitted by his parents. “I was very surprised to learn the complete scope of this mobilization,” says Sylvie Godard.
Christopheates’s conviction intervened a few days before that, in appeal, Of the writer Franco-Algerio Boalem Sansal to five years in prison.
Source: BFM TV
