Lawyer of Boualem Sansal, Imprisoned in Algeria, Takes His Case to the United Nations

ALDAR /

Nearly four months after his arrest, Algerian-French writer Boualem Sansal remains detained by the authorities of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, while being denied access to his French lawyer, François Zimeray. As legal violations escalate, Zimeray has decided to appeal to the United Nations to challenge the legality of his detention.

In a dramatic development, the French newspaper Marianne revealed that pressure had been exerted on Sansal to force him to replace his French lawyer with another one who was “non-Jewish,” according to envoys from the Algerian regime. Additionally, the head of the Algerian Bar Association, without following legal procedures, announced that the 80-year-old writer had decided to dismiss all his Algerian and French lawyers, opting instead to defend himself. However, Zimeray asserts that he has not received any official revocation of his mandate from his client, emphasizing that any document issued under these circumstances would be legally questionable.

In response to these violations, François Zimeray announced on Tuesday that he had submitted complaints to several United Nations bodies, stating that “the impossibility of legal defense means the absence of a fair trial, making the detention arbitrary.”

The French lawyer pointed out that he had adhered to Algerian legal procedures for months but received no official response. His repeated requests for a visa to visit his client were ignored, without even a formal rejection from the Algerian authorities. He also condemned an anti-Semitic media campaign in Algeria, which has gone unchecked by official bodies.

Zimeray confirmed that he had appealed to two UN mechanisms:

1.The Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, arguing that “judicial independence cannot exist in a country where the president humiliates defendants while disregarding the presumption of innocence.”

2.The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, through the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.