Questioned by AFP, the mother of French journalist Christophe Gleizes, imprisoned in Algeria since May 2024, sent a request for pardon to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
“It’s a call from a desperate mother”: the mother of Christophe Gleizes has great hopes on the request for pardon addressed to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to obtain the release of her son, a sports journalist sentenced to seven years in prison in Algeria. With the letter she sent a few days ago to the Algerian leader, Sylvie Godard “calls for a gesture of humanity, magnanimity and generosity”she explains in an interview given Monday toAFPon the sidelines of a visit to the Senate with her partner Francis Godard.
“I think that he (President Tebboune, Editor’s note) has a family, that he knows the distress of mothers or grandmothers and that he could be receptive to this kind of message”she adds. “This would be the end of our ordeal, of our nightmare which has lasted for 18 months”she continues, her voice choked with emotion.
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Algeria: the mother of French journalist Christophe Gleizes sent a request for pardon to President Tebboune
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Collaborator of French magazines So Foot et SocietyChristophe Gleizes, 36, was arrested on May 28, 2024 in Algeria, where he had gone for a report on the country’s most successful football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (JSK), based in Tizi Ouzou, 100 kilometers east of Algiers.
On December 3, 2025, the Tizi Ouzou Court of Appeal confirmed his sentence to seven years in prison for “apology of terrorism”. Algerian justice accuses him of contacts with people linked to the separatist movement MAK (Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie), classified as terrorist in Algeria. The journalist has filed a cassation appeal against this conviction, his lawyers said on Sunday.
Morale of steel
Since this judgment, his relatives have been able to get news via his French and Algerian lawyers, as well as through Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, Archbishop of Algiers, who visit him in prison. “All three confirm that he stands on his feet, that he is very combative and that he has maintained his morale of steel and that reassures us enormously”.
In France, the mobilization continues. On Monday, his parents were received in the Senate, in particular by its president Gérard Larcher. On the steps of the institution, 80 senators posed alongside them for a photo of support. His lawyers keep Christophe Gleizes informed of the mobilization. That “gives him very, very strong morale”assure those close to him. “We know that Christophe is holding on, that he believes in our mobilization”, “we, here, in freedom, must be worthy of him”continues his mother.
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The young man shares his cell with a fellow Malian inmate. “They created bonds of friendship. He teaches him to read and write Frenchshe continues. For me it was very reassuring, very comforting, to know that after the trial, he was returning to his cell, but with someone waiting for him and who was caring..
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His relatives send him books. There is also a library at the prison, where this “great lover of 19th century literature” take advantage of it to “read or reread” classics: “The Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov, “The Red and the Black by Stendhal” or even “Madame Bovary”…
It would be good if (the) world (of football) moved in a slightly more vigorous way.
Sylvie Godard
Today, those close to the journalist, supported by the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) association, say they are counting heavily on the mobilization of “football world”. The mother and stepfather of Christophe Gleizes welcome the initiative of eight Ligue 1 clubs which have already shown their support, and the French Football Federation (FFF) which is to display the journalist’s portrait on the facade of its headquarters in Paris on Wednesday. But “it would be good if this world moved in a slightly more vigorous way”they add, calling in particular on the “glories” of this sport to do “a little show of courage”. “Just to say, Christophe should not be imprisoned, he was only doing his job”.
For his relatives, the case of Christophe Gleizes and that of Boualem Sansal, pardoned and released in November by Algiers, are “totally different”. “On one side there is a writer who has taken political positions. Christophe, for his part, has never, anywhere, in any of his writings, any of his statements, said anything that calls into question the Algerian power. He’s a sports journalist..
