W
hat is the Algerian regime's strategy? If its intention is to strengthen its most determined opponents abroad, especially in France, and discourage advocates of calm dialogue and resistance to escalation, it could hardly have chosen a better path. In many respects, the sentencing of French journalist Christophe Gleizes to seven years in prison by the Tizi Ouzou appeals court on December 3 is incomprehensible. It is not only a glaring miscarriage of justice, based on a fantastical charge of "advocacy of terrorism" against a reporter who had investigated the Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie – the major Tizi Ouzou football club and one of the most decorated in Algerian football – but also entirely irrational in terms of Algeria's strict interests and its international image.
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Algerian court upholds French journalist's seven-year prison sentence
But is the Algerian leadership still open to reason, or is it blinded by paranoia, which it believes is the key to its survival? That is open to doubt, given it has just squandered a rare chance to restore its relationship with France, which has been in open crisis for nearly a year and a half. The pardon granted on November 12 by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal seemed to herald a thaw. That outcome, the result of discreet back-channel negotiations facilitated by German mediation, marked the success of diplomacy based on respectful dialogue. At the same time, it highlighted the failure of the "power struggle" approach promoted by former French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau.
