01:40Todd, let me ask you, because you heard the French prime minister allude to the fact that July the 5th is Independence Day in Algeria.
01:52It's coming up, and there's the hope that now that we've had the appeals court, there will be a pardon from the president.
02:01But a lot of stars have to align, though.
02:05Not so much.
02:07He was probably going to be pardoned before, according to the newspaper Liberation, the Algerians were going to pardon him.
02:14He appealed because he missed a letter from his lawyer.
02:18And then the French hysteria around this has made it impossible for the Algerians to do anything.
02:23The Algerians have laws.
02:25This old man, he's really 75, according to all the sources I've read, which is old, should not be in prison.
02:34But he blatantly violated an important Algerian law.
02:37So now the French are pretending that nobody should apply their own laws about terrorism in this case.
02:44And everything indicates that Taboune, the president of Algeria, will pardon him, would have done so before had he not appealed his sentence, etc.
02:52So this has been a series of errors and really bad decisions on the part of certain Algerian authorities.
03:00But it's been just the French reaction about a man who just got French citizenship a few months ago, a writer, however.
03:08So it's been this hysterical reaction of nobody can deal with this hysterical reaction.
03:13Todd, he's suffering from cancer.
03:16And he you say many other people who are in prison.
03:19And you say that a lot of prisoners suffering.
03:22All right.
03:22He should not be in prison.
03:24He should not be in prison.
03:27His conviction is for terrorism.
03:29It's a terror.
03:30Exactly right.
03:32I mean, how is it a terror charge?
03:33Is he incite to violence?
03:34He was 45 years old.
03:36He was put in jail for terrorism for a mistranslated version of a YouTube video.
03:44People are being put in terrorist, terrorist, terrorism, in jail in various countries.
03:47It's unacceptable.
03:48Here too.
03:49But he actually violated a law which defines terrorism as attacks on the integrity of the territory.
03:55He did it explicitly.
03:56To give you an example, two weeks after him, Ali Ben-Hajj, one of the founders of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, the FIS, was put in jail for the same reason, for the exact same words.
04:08Now, these things are not good.
04:10I'm against them.
04:12But the Algerians have done it fairly.
04:13It's a well-known law.
04:15So we should protest the law.
04:17There's a lot of people in prison.
04:18There's too many people in prison in various places for, you know, opinions.
04:22And that's unacceptable.
04:24But to turn this into a giant campaign is a choice.
04:31And, of course, you were talking about the relations which have gone from bad to worse between France and Algeria, particularly with Paris' decision to recognize Morocco's sovereignty over the Western Sahara, which is—
04:51Yeah, the Moroccans invaded the Western Sahara in 1975.
04:55And international law has always held that they don't have sovereignty.
04:58And still does to this day.
04:59But in exchange for recognizing Israel, yeah, in exchange for recognizing Israel, Israel's right to control the West Bank, the United States recognized this.
05:07Macron decided to do this for reasons that are mysterious.
05:11It's a big issue for Algerians, for sure.
05:14So it's created this enormous tension on basic fundamental principles of Algerians' foreign policy.
05:22I really—it's just horrific that Boulem Saint-Saële and a few other people are being caught up in this.
05:28But the issues are big.
05:30Todd Shepard, many thanks for speaking with us from Algiers.
