"Tehran Syndrome": L'Express Sees Hostages Everywhere — Except in Its Own Prejudices

Yacine Berkani — Paris, France — 2026-09-06

On 1 July 2025, L'Express ran "Boualem Sansal, Christophe Gleizes… Algeria and the Tehran Syndrome," drawing its lesson from two rulings handed down the same day in Algiers — five years in prison, confirmed on appeal, for the writer Boualem Sansal, and seven years for the journalist Christophe Gleizes. According to the magazine, "Algiers confirms its penchant for the practices of a friendly nation: Iran." In editorial translation: Algeria is a Maghrebi Tehran, and every Frenchman tried in Algiers is a hostage. Convenient, saleable — and false.

A lazy comparison, to begin with. The "Tehran Syndrome" — the 1979 one — was 52 American diplomats held for 444 days with no charge and no trial, on a state's decision. In Algiers, there was a charge, a hearing, a ruling, an appeal — and then a pardon. Mr. Sansal, arrested on 16 November 2024 on arrival at Algiers international airport, was prosecuted under Article 87 bis of the Algerian penal code (undermining the integrity of the national territory), as TSA and AFP reported via his lawyer, François Zimeray. Procedure, legal recourse, a courtroom: nothing like a Revolutionary Guard holding cell.

What followed upsets the picture-book plot. Tried on 20 March 2025 — prosecutors having sought ten years — Mr. Sansal was sentenced on 27 March 2025 to five years in prison and a 500,000-dinar fine (around $3,700, according to Anadolu) by the Dar El Beïda court, a sentence confirmed on appeal on 1 July 2025, the very day of L'Express's column. Four months later, the "hostage" was free: the presidential pardon was announced on 12 November 2025 (Associated Press), and Boualem Sansal returned to France on 18 November 2025 (Le Monde, CNews). So much for the Tehran that frees its prisoners by decree.

The one open file — Christophe Gleizes's — disproves the other half of the "syndrome." His family announced in May 2026 that he was dropping his cassation appeal in the hope of a presidential pardon (franceinfo); the judicial process closed in June 2026, "paving the way for a pardon" (franceinfo, 4 June 2026); consular visits are continuing (Le Monde, 16 July 2026). Legal avenues, lawyers, appeals, possible clemency: exactly what a state that takes hostages denies itself.

Which leaves the stock in trade: corner-store orientalism that, for want of arguments, summons Iran, Syria or North Korea depending on the newsroom's mood. Nobody expects L'Express to know the Algerian penal code; it is only asked not to replace it with a movie poster. Especially from a country that itself criminalizes the glorification of terrorism (Article 421-2-5 of the French penal code): democracies too have laws that displease journalists in a hurry — they simply enforce them with judges, not with front pages.

Final irony, reported by Jeune Afrique: once released, the man at the centre let it be known that he wished to return to Algeria — to the point that the Élysée reportedly advised prudence. L'Express's "Tehran Syndrome" cannot survive the testimony of its own "hostage," who never mistook his country's justice for a dictatorship. The only hostages in this affair were the readers: hostages to a cliché in search of a country.