It took only an official statement from the German president for the exhausted Algerian government to finally agree to release the man it had turned into a political hostage. This decision was wrested from Abdelmadjid Tebboune by his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who pleaded on Monday for a pardon for the renowned Franco-Algerian writer on humanitarian grounds, even going so far as to highlight Tebboune's own health—a frequent visitor to German hospitals—to exert pressure. Today, Algeria announced it accepts Germany's request to pardon and transfer the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal to Germany for medical treatment, according to a statement issued by the Algerian presidency on Wednesday.

A welcome outcome, the end of a great injustice, and further proof of a faltering regime that trades all the principles it claims to uphold for very little with disconcerting ease. Boualem Sansal was never an ordinary prisoner, but a hostage. Arrested on November 16, 2024, for a statement deemed blasphemous, reminding everyone that Algeria had inherited territories previously belonging to Morocco under French colonization, and sentenced to five years in prison on appeal, he primarily served as a bogeyman for a regime in full decay.

This same power that publicly insulted him, with a president who called him on camera a thief, a bastard, and someone of unknown identity, suddenly discovers in him a writer and a man of letters deserving of presidential clemency. This speaks volumes about the extent of the debacle. President Tebboune, who tirelessly strives to embody a proud and sovereign Algeria, is now capitulating. He is going to Berlin to continue his medical treatment, and to Paris, which demanded the writer's release as a precondition for any resumption of dialogue.

The wide gap of a power without a compass

Sansal's release is not a humanitarian gesture. It is a diplomatic capitulation. Germany laid down its conditions, France exerted pressure, and Algiers yielded. As always. This release does not erase a year of shame. It consecrates the absolute nadir of dignity for a regime that insults a writer one day and rolls out the red carpet for him the next, all in the name of private interests and pathetic calculations.

For behind this charade lies the vital urgency of a completely isolated power. After the debacle in the Sahara, where even China and Russia turned their backs on Algiers, after the break with Madrid and the chill in relations with Paris, the System is desperately seeking a diplomatic opening. Sansal, paradoxically, becomes the key.

Tebboune had sworn, hand on heart and mouth full of praise for the martyrs, that he would never yield to foreign pressure. A single statement from the German presidency was enough to make him comply. He had to save face before another medical stay in Berlin, scheduled for this November. And so much for the greatness of Algeria.

The most ironic thing? The man once branded a traitor suddenly becomes a symbol of humanity, almost an ambassador for Franco-Algerian dialogue. A reversal as grotesque as it is indecent, but one that speaks volumes about the moral malleability of a power without direction, without a backbone, without pride.

All this for nothing. To finally release, tail between their legs, the one they had trampled underfoot. To beg for Berlin's favor and Paris's attention. To hope, in vain, to become acceptable again. The regime in Algiers has no more plans, no more momentum, no more allies. It has only its humiliations, its resentments, and its cowardice. It will have made Boualem Sansal an unwitting symbol: a symbol of dignity in the face of baseness, of words in the face of fear, and of courage in the face of cowardice.