PARIS: Politicians, writers and activists have called for the release of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, whose arrest in Algeria is seen as the latest instance of the stifling of creative expression in the military-dominated North African country.
The 75-year-old author, who is an outspoken critic of Islamism and the Algerian regime, has not been heard from by friends, family or his French publisher since leaving Paris for Algiers earlier this month. He has not been seen near his home in his small town, Boumerdes, his neighbors told The Associated Press.
“The detention without serious grounds of a writer of French nationality is unacceptable,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Wednesday.
He added Sansal’s work “does honor to both his countries and to the values we cherish.”
The European Parliament discussed Algeria’s repression of freedom of speech on Wednesday and called for “his immediate and unconditional release.”
Algerian authorities have not publicly announced charges against Sansal, but the APS state news service said he was arrested at the airport.
Though no longer censored, Sansal’s novels have in the past faced bans in Algeria. A professed admirer of French culture, his writings on Islam’s role in society, authoritarianism, freedom of expression and the civil war that ravaged Algeria throughout the 1990s have won him fans across the ideological spectrum in France, from far-right leader Marine Le Pen to President Emmanuel Macron, who attended his French naturalization ceremony in 2023.
But his work has provoked ire in Algeria, from both authorities and Islamists, who have issued death threats against him in the 1990s and afterward.
Though few garner such international attention, Sansal is among a long list of political prisoners incarcerated in Algeria, where the hopes of a protest movement that led to the ouster of the country’s then-82 year old president have been crushed under President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
Human rights groups have decried the ongoing repression facing journalists, activists and writers. Amnesty International in September called it a “brutal crackdown on human rights including the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.”
Algerian authorities have in recent months disrupted a book fair in Bejaia and excluded prominent authors from the country’s largest book fair in Algeria has in recent months, including this year’s Goncourt Prize winner Kamel Daoud,
“This tragic news reflects an alarming reality in Algeria, where freedom of expression is no more than a memory in the face of repression, imprisonment and the surveillance of the entire society,” French-Algerian author Kamel Daoud wrote in an editorial signed by more than a dozen authors in Le Point this week.
Sansal has been a polarizing figure in Algeria for holding some pro-Israel views and for likening political Islam to Nazism and totalitarianism in his novels, including “The Oath of the Barbarians” and “2084: The End of the World.”
Despite the controversial subject matter, Sansal had never faced detention. His arrest comes as relations between France and Algeria face newfound strains. France in July backed Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, angering Algeria, which has long backed the independence Polisario Front and pushed for a referendum to determine the future of the coastal northwest African territory.
“A regime that thinks it has to stop its writers, whatever they think, is certainly a weak regime,” French-Algerian academic Ali Bensaad wrote in a statement posted on Facebook.
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Algeria facing growing calls to release French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal
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Algeria facing growing calls to release French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal
- “The detention without serious grounds of a writer of French nationality is unacceptable,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said
- The European Parliament discussed Algeria’s repression of freedom of speech on Wednesday and called for “his immediate and unconditional release”
Retouched images of Israel’s first lady, distributed by the state, ignite a fiery ethics debate
JERUSALEM: The photos seemed destined for posterity in Israel’s state archives.
In the snapshots, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is joined by his wife, Sara, as well as US Ambassador Mike Huckabee and a group of Israeli soldiers, as they light Hannukah candles at Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews pray. The leaders exchange triumphant looks.
But something is off.
Sara Netanyahu’s skin is poreless, her eyes overly defined and her hair perfectly coiffed — a look officials acknowledge is the result of heavy retouching.
Critics say the issue isn’t the use of photo-editing software, which is common on the social media accounts of celebrities and public figures. They say it’s the circulation of the images in official government announcements, which distorts reality, violates ethical codes and risks compromising official archiving and record-keeping efforts.
“All the pictures to this day in the archives in Israel are authentic pictures of reality as it was captured by the lenses of photographers’ cameras since the establishment of the state,” said Shabi Gatenio, the veteran political journalist who broke the story in The Seventh Eye, an Israeli site that covers local media. “These images, if entered into the database, will forever infect it with a virtual reality that never existed.”
Since the manipulation of images was revealed, the government has taken the unprecedented step of crediting Sara Netanyahu in its releases that include manipulated images. And it’s not clear if official archive will include images of her taken during the second half of last year, when Gatenio said the editing appears to have begun.
The first lady’s personal spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Nitzan Chen, director of the Government Press Office, told The Associated Press that images of the prime minister are never manipulated and that his office would not upload any retouched photos to the official archive.
Personal Photoshop habit enters political realm
Sara Netanyahu, 67, has long used photo-editing software on her images. Her social media account is filled with images in which her face appears heavily retouched.
But the topic raised eyebrows since her Photoshop habit entered the public record.
Gatenio said he first noticed this last July, when the couple visited President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., and again in September, as Sara Netanyahu joined her husband on the tarmac ahead of a trip to New York for the UN General Assembly.
At the time, the prime minister’s office released a video of the send-off along with a photo, credited to Avi Ohayon, an official government photographer.
Comparing the photo to the raw video, Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said the image had been post-processed, bearing local manipulations to smooth the first lady’s skin and remove wrinkles.
Since then, photos showing the first lady meeting with Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, in Washington also appear to have been retouched, Farid said.
“There’s been some Photoshop editing to — let’s call it — ‘beautify,’ lighten, smooth the face,” Farid said.
“Is it nefarious? No. Is it a problem? Yes. This is about something bigger than, ‘she Photoshopped her face to make herself look younger.’ This is about trust. Why should I trust any official photo coming out of that administration?”
Chen, the head of the Government Press Office, said office lawyers are trying to determine how to handle and properly identify photos “processed by people other than GPO photographers.”
He said the Justice Ministry is also examining the “criteria, limitations and possibilities” of the edited images, though he stressed there is nothing illegal about touching up photos. The issue, he said, is being transparent when such changes are made.
For now, his office has decided to add Sara Netanyahu’s name to press releases that include retouched images. Since November, press releases showing photos of her smiling next to Trump and the family of the last hostage in Gaza in Washington, visiting a Miami synagogue and attending a funeral for an Israeli mayor have included this label.
At least one outlet, the Times of Israel, has said it will no longer carry official state photos that appear to have been manipulated. The Associated Press does not publish images that appear to have been retouched or digitally manipulated.
A broader phenomenon
Chen said the prime minister is never edited: “No Photoshop, no corrections, no color. Nothing.”
While his face may not be retouched, the prime minister’s official Instagram account tells another story.
The page has posted a bevy of content that appears to be AI-edited or generated, including a picture of the couple with Trump and first lady Melania Trump celebrating the new year in Washington.
The photo raised suspicions in Israel because it shows Sara Netanyahu wearing a black dress absent from other photos of the event, where she wore a dark red frock. Appearing in the sky above the couples are brightly colored fireworks and American and Israeli flags that Farid said were “almost certainly” generated by AI.
It is now marked with a tag on Instagram indicating that it may have been altered or generated using AI. It is not clear when the tag was added nor by whom.
Netanyahu is not alone. Many world figures, including Trump, use AI-generated image manipulation frequently in their public output.
Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, who runs the “Democracy in the Digital Age Program,” at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, called it “part of the populist playbook” and said there was “no question” that Netanyahu was emulating how Trump uses the technology.
Netanyahu’s official Instagram has posted video of Trump and Netanyahu in a B-2 bomber that appears entirely AI-generated. It is captioned “on our victory lap,” referencing the joint Israel-US attacks on Iran last year.
“This is exactly what Netanyahu and his surrounding circle have tried to do for many years,” she said. “Presenting himself as a superhero, his wife as a supermodel, their family as a super loyal family. Even when it wasn’t the case, even at the expense of actual political work, administrative work and social work.”
She said Israel has reached a critical point in official government record-keeping and communications.
“The question of archiving the truth, archiving history, will be one of the questions of our time.”
In the snapshots, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is joined by his wife, Sara, as well as US Ambassador Mike Huckabee and a group of Israeli soldiers, as they light Hannukah candles at Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews pray. The leaders exchange triumphant looks.
But something is off.
Sara Netanyahu’s skin is poreless, her eyes overly defined and her hair perfectly coiffed — a look officials acknowledge is the result of heavy retouching.
Critics say the issue isn’t the use of photo-editing software, which is common on the social media accounts of celebrities and public figures. They say it’s the circulation of the images in official government announcements, which distorts reality, violates ethical codes and risks compromising official archiving and record-keeping efforts.
“All the pictures to this day in the archives in Israel are authentic pictures of reality as it was captured by the lenses of photographers’ cameras since the establishment of the state,” said Shabi Gatenio, the veteran political journalist who broke the story in The Seventh Eye, an Israeli site that covers local media. “These images, if entered into the database, will forever infect it with a virtual reality that never existed.”
Since the manipulation of images was revealed, the government has taken the unprecedented step of crediting Sara Netanyahu in its releases that include manipulated images. And it’s not clear if official archive will include images of her taken during the second half of last year, when Gatenio said the editing appears to have begun.
The first lady’s personal spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Nitzan Chen, director of the Government Press Office, told The Associated Press that images of the prime minister are never manipulated and that his office would not upload any retouched photos to the official archive.
Personal Photoshop habit enters political realm
Sara Netanyahu, 67, has long used photo-editing software on her images. Her social media account is filled with images in which her face appears heavily retouched.
But the topic raised eyebrows since her Photoshop habit entered the public record.
Gatenio said he first noticed this last July, when the couple visited President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., and again in September, as Sara Netanyahu joined her husband on the tarmac ahead of a trip to New York for the UN General Assembly.
At the time, the prime minister’s office released a video of the send-off along with a photo, credited to Avi Ohayon, an official government photographer.
Comparing the photo to the raw video, Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said the image had been post-processed, bearing local manipulations to smooth the first lady’s skin and remove wrinkles.
Since then, photos showing the first lady meeting with Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, in Washington also appear to have been retouched, Farid said.
“There’s been some Photoshop editing to — let’s call it — ‘beautify,’ lighten, smooth the face,” Farid said.
“Is it nefarious? No. Is it a problem? Yes. This is about something bigger than, ‘she Photoshopped her face to make herself look younger.’ This is about trust. Why should I trust any official photo coming out of that administration?”
Chen, the head of the Government Press Office, said office lawyers are trying to determine how to handle and properly identify photos “processed by people other than GPO photographers.”
He said the Justice Ministry is also examining the “criteria, limitations and possibilities” of the edited images, though he stressed there is nothing illegal about touching up photos. The issue, he said, is being transparent when such changes are made.
For now, his office has decided to add Sara Netanyahu’s name to press releases that include retouched images. Since November, press releases showing photos of her smiling next to Trump and the family of the last hostage in Gaza in Washington, visiting a Miami synagogue and attending a funeral for an Israeli mayor have included this label.
At least one outlet, the Times of Israel, has said it will no longer carry official state photos that appear to have been manipulated. The Associated Press does not publish images that appear to have been retouched or digitally manipulated.
A broader phenomenon
Chen said the prime minister is never edited: “No Photoshop, no corrections, no color. Nothing.”
While his face may not be retouched, the prime minister’s official Instagram account tells another story.
The page has posted a bevy of content that appears to be AI-edited or generated, including a picture of the couple with Trump and first lady Melania Trump celebrating the new year in Washington.
The photo raised suspicions in Israel because it shows Sara Netanyahu wearing a black dress absent from other photos of the event, where she wore a dark red frock. Appearing in the sky above the couples are brightly colored fireworks and American and Israeli flags that Farid said were “almost certainly” generated by AI.
It is now marked with a tag on Instagram indicating that it may have been altered or generated using AI. It is not clear when the tag was added nor by whom.
Netanyahu is not alone. Many world figures, including Trump, use AI-generated image manipulation frequently in their public output.
Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, who runs the “Democracy in the Digital Age Program,” at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, called it “part of the populist playbook” and said there was “no question” that Netanyahu was emulating how Trump uses the technology.
Netanyahu’s official Instagram has posted video of Trump and Netanyahu in a B-2 bomber that appears entirely AI-generated. It is captioned “on our victory lap,” referencing the joint Israel-US attacks on Iran last year.
“This is exactly what Netanyahu and his surrounding circle have tried to do for many years,” she said. “Presenting himself as a superhero, his wife as a supermodel, their family as a super loyal family. Even when it wasn’t the case, even at the expense of actual political work, administrative work and social work.”
She said Israel has reached a critical point in official government record-keeping and communications.
“The question of archiving the truth, archiving history, will be one of the questions of our time.”
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