The Algerian Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted this Tuesday, January 7 to Emmanuel Macron’s statements on Algeria and the case of the writer Boualem Sansal. In a statement, Algerian diplomacy denounced these words deemed offensive, claiming that they “dishonor, above all, the one who kept them”.
“The Algerian government has stored French president’s statements on Algeria with stupor. These affirmations, imprints of casualness and lightness, reflect an inadmissible interference in an internal Algerian case, ”specifies the text. The ministry firmly condemned what it considers an unjustifiable intrusion in the sovereignty of the country, qualifying these words “reprehensible, rejectable and unacceptable”.
Algeria also rejects the way in which Emmanuel Macron presented this case, calling it a question of freedom of expression. “What the French president is wrongly described as a problem related to freedom of expression is, in reality, an attack on the territorial integrity of Algeria, an offense clearly sanctioned by the law of a sovereign and independent state,” said the press release.
The day before, Emmanuel Macron had criticized the detention of Boualem Sansal, a Algerian-French writer arrested in November 2024 in Algiers. He had declared that Algeria “dishonored” by refusing to release the writer. These statements have sparked lively indignation on the Algerian side, strengthening diplomatic tensions between the two countries.
