PARIS: France’s President Emmanuel Macron will work toward the release of a French journalist in jail in Algeria “as soon as possible,” his office said Thursday, a day after an Algerian court confirmed his incarceration.
An appeals court upheld a seven-year prison term against Christophe Gleizes, a sports journalist who was jailed in June on terrorism-related charges.
Gleizes, 36, is France’s only journalist imprisoned abroad, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). His jailing comes at a time of diplomatic friction between France and its former colony Algeria.
Macron was “deeply worried” to learn the news, his office said.
“We will continue to engage with the Algerian authorities to secure his release and his return to France as soon as possible,” it added.
Gleizes was arrested and placed under judicial control in May 2024 after traveling to Tizi Ouzou in northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region — home to the Amazigh Kabyle people — to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie.
He was accused of having been in contact with a local football figure prominent in the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), designated a “terrorist” organization by the authorities in 2021.
His jail sentence for “glorifying terrorism” came as France and its former colony wrangle over issues including Paris backing Morocco’s claim of sovereignty over Western Sahara, a territory where Algeria backs a pro-independence movement.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on Thursday that the journalist’s release was “a major element” in current talks between the two countries.
Macron said he was “available” to speak to Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune if it were to allow progress in tense relations between both sides.
Tebboune last month pardoned French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal after a year-long imprisonment in Algeria, following comments made by the writer.
Macron to work to free French journalist held in Algeria: office
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Macron to work to free French journalist held in Algeria: office
- Macron was “deeply worried” to learn the news, his office said
- “We will continue to engage with the Algerian authorities to secure his release and his return to France as soon as possible,” it added
Gisèle Pelicot recounts harrowing discovery of her husband’s rape crimes
PARIS: Gisèle Pelicot’s brain froze as the French police officer revealed the unthinkable.
“Fifty-three men had come to our house to rape me,” she recalls him telling her.
Sharing details of the horror that until now had largely been reserved for French courts, Pelicot is publicly telling her story of survival and courage in her own words, in a book and her first series of interviews since a landmark trial in 2024 turned her into a global icon against sexual violence and imprisoned her husband who knocked her out with drugs so other men could assault her inert body.
Extracts of “A Hymn to Life, Shame Has to Change Sides,” published by French newspaper Le Monde, rewound to Nov. 2, 2020 — the day when her world fell apart. Her then-husband, Dominique Pelicot, had been summoned by police for questioning after a supermarket security guard caught him secretly taking video up women’s skirts.
Gisèle accompanied him and was completely unprepared for the bombshell delivered by the officer, Laurent Perret. Gradually, and with care, he explained how the man she regarded as a loving husband and whom she described as “a super guy” had, in fact, made her the unwitting victim of his perversions.
“I am going to show you photos and videos that are not going to please you,” the officer said, words she recounts in the book.
The first showed a man raping a woman who had been laid out on her side and dressed up in a suspender belt.
“That’s you in this photo,” the officer said. He then showed her another photo, and another after that — drawn from a collection of images that Dominique Pelicot took of his wife over the years when he regularly knocked her unconscious by lacing her food and drink with drugs, so strangers he invited to their home could assault her while he filmed.
