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IV. INTRODUCTION

If there is a case that captures the reality of "disappearances" in Algeria, it might well be that of Rachid Sassene. A welder by profession and father of four, Sassene was forty-seven years old when a force of more than twenty police - some in plainclothes, some in uniform - burst into his home in Hamma Bouziane, a town near Constantine, at 11p.m. on May 18, 1996. The force seized both Sassene and his wife, Bariza Zaier, thirty-one, and brought them to the central police station in Constantine, where they were placed in separate cells. Zaier was released after fifteen days, tried, and given a suspended sentence for "aiding a terrorist group." Her husband was never seen again.14
Zaier searched for him everywhere, inquiring at police stations and writing to every state agency that might have information. Authorities answered her inquiries, but the replies were unpersuasive and ultimately contradictory. The judicial police informed her on April 27, 1997, that her husband had never been arrested. The Ministry of Interior stated in a letter of February 2, 2000, that it had conducted an inquiry and could not locate him. The National Human Rights Observatory (Observatoire national des droits de l'Homme, ONDH) wrote in 2001 that he was neither being held nor sought by the security forces.
Then on February 11, 2001, police informed Zaier that according to an official record dated May 19, 1996 - the day after she and her husband were taken into custody - her husband had been "eliminated" by the security forces. This was the first notification she had received that Sassene had been killed five years earlier. It included nothing about the date or circumstances of his death. Since that notification two years ago, Zaier has received no further information on the fate of her husband or where he is buried.
The case of Rachid Sassene debunks two themes of the government's management of the "disappeared" issue - first, that the identification of the perpetrators as security force members is to be doubted in many cases and, second, that the authorities are doing all they can to locate the missing. In the Sassene case, as in countless other cases, the evidence is incontrovertible that security forces carried out the arrest and that the official effort to locate him was, at best, callous and inept.
From 1992 until 1998, Algeria's security forces and their accomplices made "disappear" more than 7,000 persons, according to the president's own human rights commission (see below). This number exceeds the number of "disappearances" known to have been carried out in any country, except wartime Bosnia, during or since that period.

Although Algerian security forces have all but abandoned the practice since 1999, almost none of the "disappearances" that occurred have been solved, and - in a sign that safeguards against its recurrence are absent - security forces continue to violate Algerian law with impunity by flouting arrest procedures, detaining persons secretly, and holding them longer than the legal limit of twelve days before they are presented to a magistrate.

Facing domestic and international pressure, the government first acknowledged the existence of the problem of "disappearances" in 1998 and vowed to investigate cases brought to its attention. It has since developed mechanisms and bureaus to address the problem and reported at intervals on its supposed progress in elucidating the cases. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has voiced concern about the issue in general terms and promised to help the families. Officials of various ministries have responded to regular inquiries on the subject from members of Algeria's parliament, the European Union, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and others, providing the results of investigations that were supposedly carried out but never furnishing verifiable and specific information to resolve the cases in question.

This report scrutinizes what the government of Algeria has done since it first vowed four years ago to address allegations of "disappearances," and shows that it has done nothing. The executive branch, the judiciary, and official human rights institutions have utterly failed to provide the thousands of affected families with any concrete, verifiable information about their relatives. Neither the authorities nor the courts have identified or brought to justice a single state agent implicated in carrying out "disappearances." Nor has a single family received compensation for the "disappearance" of a relative, despite the devastating emotional and financial impact the crime has had on thousands of parents, spouses, and children.15 The government has failed even to acknowledge the responsibility of state agents for a pattern of "disappearances." And it has certainly failed to establish institutional or legal safeguards to prevent a revival of the practice should decision-makers deem it once again to be a useful tool.

Although organizations that advocate the cause of the "disappeared" enjoy greater freedom to act and to speak out than five years ago, the government continues to restrict their freedoms and curb access to Algeria for international bodies concerned with the issue. The National Association of Families of the Disappeared (Association Nationale de Familles des Disparus, ANFD) was refused legal recognition when it applied for it in 1998. The Association of the Families of the Disappeared of Constantine (Association des familles des disparus de Constantine, AFDC) is also awaiting a reply to its application. Somoud, an organization of families whose relatives remain missing after being kidnapped by armed groups, has been waiting for legal status as a national organization since first submitting its application in 1997. Somoud's Algiers branch received legal recognition in 2000.16

Demonstrations and sit-ins staged by relatives of the "disappeared" are usually tolerated but they are also periodically broken up with force by police, especially when these rallies are likely to be witnessed by prominent foreign visitors.17 On November 6, 2002, for example, police blocked the path of family members shortly after they began a march in Algiers toward the office of the president, shoving and beating those who refused to disperse.18

An international conference on "disappeared" and abducted persons, co-sponsored by Somoud, the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights and SOS-Disparus and scheduled to take place in Algiers on January 17 and 18, 2003, had to be postponed when the foreign participants were not granted visas in time to attend. However, two of the sponsoring groups were able to hold a national conference on January 18, a first in Algeria.)

In a case showing the impunity that protects the perpetrators of "disappearances," Mohamed Smaïn, a human rights activist in the western city of Relizane, was sentenced to a prison term and heavy fines for libelling the gendarmerie19 and members of local "self-defense groups"20 whom he publicly accused of involvement in "disappearances" and summary executions.21 Meanwhile, one of the men he accused, Relizane ex-mayor El-Hadj Fergane, remains at liberty despite the testimony of numerous local relatives of "disappeared" persons that Fergane was himself present at, and often directing, the arrests of the persons who then "disappeared."

Algerian authorities have not responded to a request for an invitation, submitted in August 2000 by the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, to conduct a mission. The WGEID is the chief mechanism within the U.N. system dealing with the phenomenon of "disappearances." Nor has Algeria granted access to the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, who has a request to visit pending since 1997, or to the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, whose request is pending since 1999. However, Algeria permitted the special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief to visit during September 2002.22

Algeria grants access to international human rights monitoring organizations only sporadically; to monitor conditions effectively, these groups need to visit the country on a regular and routine basis. Most of the time during the past two years, groups that monitor the "disappearance" issue among others, such as Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch, have been refused visas to conduct formal research missions in Algeria, despite repeated formal requests for access. The only exceptions were the visas granted to Human Rights Watch in October 2002, to Amnesty International to visit in late February 2003, and to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) on the two occasions they requested visas, in January 2001 and October 2002. A visa request from Human Rights Watch, submitted January 8, 2003, had not received a reply as this report went to press.
The year 2003 may be a critical one in addressing the issue of "disappearances" in Algeria. After years of denials and disinformation, the state seemed during 2002 to be feeling its way toward a resolution of the issue, which had become an irritant to Algeria's diplomatic rehabilitation internationally. At an October 28 press conference, Major General Mohamed Touati, a presidential advisor considered to be one of the most influential figures in Algeria, was reported as saying "disappearances" were an "unfortunate and prickly issue that must be addressed by the governing institutions," marking the first time a senior officer of the army had publicly acknowledged the problem.23 Meanwhile, the national gendarmerie, the agency under Ministry of Defense authority that is charged with conducting investigations in response to "disappearance" complaints, has reportedly acknowledged receiving 7,046 complaints about "disappeared" persons.24
A human rights commissioner appointed by President Bouteflika in late 2001, Moustapha Farouk Ksentini, has been speaking with disarming candor on state responsibility for the "disappeared." "My conviction is that the majority of the `disappeared' had nothing to do with armed groups," he told El-Watan, rejecting one of the claims often made by officials to deflect security force responsibility.25 "I think there are 7,000 to 10,000 cases total, maybe as many as 12,000," Ksentini told Human Rights Watch in November 2002. He made clear he was referring to cases for which the security forces and their allies were responsible. To date, said Ksentini, the government had elucidated no cases of "disappearances" and the justice system "had not done its job" in a single case. Ksentini declared that he was seeking to resolve the problem and that he wanted families of the "disappeared" to consider him to be their "advocate vis-à-vis state institutions."26

Ksentini, interviewed in Le Monde, called on the state to address three dimensions of the problem:

The moral dimension should be addressed: if the state committed faults, they should be acknowledged.... Why not an apology, if it is established that "disappearances" were carried out deliberately by state institutions?

There is also a legal dimension. The families of the "disappeared" could be permitted to form associations and file legal actions. This has been done on an individual basis but it did not ever succeed.

Then there is the social dimension. We must provide aid to the families of the "disappeared," within the framework of national solidarity. It can be in the form of a monthly allowance or otherwise. Many families are asking for it because they are in a situation of dire need.27

Ksentini's public advocacy has yet to produce any results in terms of state policy. His unprecedentedly candid declarations do not directly engage the administration; the commission he heads is merely consultative.

Still, Ksentini is a presidential appointee directing a government-funded body. He is the only official making regular public statements regarding the "disappeared." His remarks therefore deserve special attention because they are shaping the public debate inside Algeria and are perhaps being used as trial balloons by which senior state officials are testing ideas for resolving the "disappearance" issue.

The positions advocated by Ksentini raise at least two grave concerns. First, he has failed to uphold truth as an essential component in addressing the "disappeared." In July 2002 he boldly vowed, "We will tell the truth and the whole truth whatever that truth may be regarding ["disappearances"]."28 But later statements suggest that Ksentini's notion of truth may be limited to a general admission of state responsibility. In an interview published in January 2003 he said that while "I have nothing against the truth" or against a truth commission, "establishing the truth will be difficult, especially since we're talking about events that go back several years" and "not much material evidence remains."29 As a self-proclaimed advocate of the families vis-à-vis the administration, Ksentini should not be pre-judging the facts but instead affirming the principle that pursuing the truth in detail is both a right belonging to individual families and a safeguard to preventing a repetition of abuses.

Even more disturbingly, Ksentini has come out in favor of a general amnesty that would include the perpetrators of "disappearances":

The first beneficiaries of such an amnesty would be persons belonging to institutions accused of having carried out disappearances.... Such a measure would have the effect of halting all investigations. To be sure, an amnesty would benefit a certain number of criminals, but that's the way it works, and it's the best we can hope for to enable Algeria to turn the page and move forward. A general amnesty is in my view inevitable. All wars end thus, but it's a political decision that will be made at a particular moment.30

While Ksentini said he would prefer such an amnesty to be granted after establishment of the truth, his position contradicts clear principles of international human rights law: perpetrators of the worst atrocities - including a systematic or widespread pattern of "disappearances" - must not be rewarded by an amnesty from criminal prosecution.

The Political Setting
Algeria's Islamist insurgency became active following the army-backed decision in January 1992 to interrupt legislative elections, ban the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut, FIS), and declare a state of emergency that remains in effect today. The FIS had just won a plurality of votes in the first round and was on its way to capturing a majority in the National Popular Assembly.

Although Islamists had engaged in sporadic acts of violence prior to the cancellation of elections, armed attacks became endemic thereafter. Armed groups first targeted members of the security forces and later started assassinating civilians whom they deemed hostile to their project of establishing an Islamic state. As the violence spread it grew more indiscriminate. Armed groups massacred men, women, and children in villages and outlying semi-urban neighborhoods, and on inter-city roads. Bombs placed in public spaces killed hundreds.

Through the mid-1990s, assassinations and bombings were commonplace in Algiers and other large cities. The major urban centers have since become more secure, but the violence persists in certain rural and outlying urban areas. During 2002 about 125 persons were killed each month in political strife, on average.

The state has confronted the violence with a range of repressive practices, including mass arbitrary detention without charge, summary executions, torture of detainees under interrogation, and "disappearances." The practice of "disappearances" soared in the mid-1990s, at a time when political violence was at its peak. The surge in "disappearances" coincided with the phasing out by authorities of two other methods of summarily incarcerating suspects that had come under domestic and international criticism: administrative detention and "special court" trials. In late 1995 authorities officially closed internment camps in the southern desert that had held more than 9,000 administrative detainees in 1992, and several hundred men at various times between 1993 and 1995. Also in 1995 authorities eliminated the "special courts" that had been set up by a decree under the state of emergency in September 1992 for the purpose of trying "terrorism" and "subversion" cases. These tribunals handed long prison terms to thousands of suspected "Islamists" and death penalties to hundreds more, in hasty trials that deprived suspects of some of the fair-trial guarantees afforded them in conventional courts.31 When these courts were eliminated in 1995 some of the legal provisions governing them were incorporated into Algeria's legal codes, such as the extension of the maximum length of garde-à-vue detention in "terrorism" and "subversion" cases from two to twelve days.32

Counting Cases, Identifying Perpetrators
"Disappearances" are by their very nature difficult to count with precision. The perpetrators try "to conceal their true nature.... [They] will try to avoid being called to account for them through lies, cover-ups and the propagation of misleading explanations and excuses."33

The task is even tougher in a country like Algeria, where both the state security forces and the armed groups they are fighting have abducted large numbers of persons and neither issues claims of responsibility. The same atmosphere of terror that makes "disappearances" possible intimidates families from reporting the facts. The frequent refusal of the arresting party to identify themselves means that witnesses might mis-identify them. Sometimes, there are no witnesses to the arrest or abduction.

The interior minister declared in May 2001 that his ministry had logged 4,880 missing-person complaints from families; he gave no indication what portion of these cases was attributable to state agents.34 A year and-a-half later, the Gendarmerie reportedly acknowledged receiving a total of 7,046 complaints, as noted above.

Various NGOs have compiled information, sometimes sketchy, sometimes detailed, on thousands of "disappearance" cases. Amnesty International states that it has information on some 4,000 cases of apparent "disappearances." Inside Algeria, the Association Nationale de Familles de Disparus (ANFD), states that it has dossiers on 7,200 cases; however, its database has never been made public.

Information from Amnesty International, various organizations and lawyers was collected into a database that was placed online in early 2002 at the human rights website www.algeria-watch.org. The database contains more than 3,600 cases, of which roughly 80 percent list the security forces or their allies as the suspected culprits.

The task of compiling an accurate list is complicated by various factors. Human rights organizations and state institutions continue to receive families who report long-missing relatives for the first time.35 Their reasons for remaining silent for years vary but have included geographic distance from the offices receiving complaints, a fear of reprisal, scepticism about the usefulness of reporting, or a hope that by remaining silent they would hasten the person's release. On the other hand, in a small number of cases, the lists may double-count the same individual due to a variation in spelling or personal data. Or families may have submitted cases where their relatives vanished of their own free will,36 or the person may have reappeared without their relatives informing each institution they had initially alerted about the "disappearance."

But in the vast majority of the 4,000 cases that have been collected and made public by Algerian and international human rights organizations, evidence links the person's abduction to the security forces or allied "self-defense organizations." One of the agencies identified most often is the feared Military Security, whose official name is the Department of Information and Security (Département du renseignement et de la sécurité, DRS). Article 19 of Algeria's Code of Penal Procedure authorizes agents of this branch of the army to act as judicial police. Of all the various security forces, Military Security acts with the greatest degree of impunity. It is "almost untouchable," according to human rights commissioner Ksentini.37

In most cases of "disappearance," the main evidence implicating the security forces is the testimony of persons who saw the arrest of the person. Identification was easiest when the arresting force included at least some men wearing identifiable uniforms. But whether or not they were all in uniform, information usually emerged pointing to the involvement of the security forces.

In some cases, particularly those that occurred in small towns or cities, many witnesses said they recognized and could name the individuals responsible for the abduction of their relative. They sometimes followed the arresting agents as they drove the detainee from the place of arrest to a police station or other security-force facility. Witnesses often noted the make or license plate number of the automobiles of the arresting agents and later linked it to a local unit of the security services. Moreover, many of the arrests took place at homes at night, when curfews were in effect and, presumably, only the security forces could move about freely.

Evidence of security-force responsibility is often compounded by information the family received after the arrest, from officials or ex-prisoners, indicating that the person was being held in a particular detention facility - before all traces of him or her were lost (see the case of Aziz Bouabdallah, below). Police stations often allowed family members to drop off food packages intended for their recently arrested relatives, only to reject the deliveries a few days later on the grounds that the prisoner was no longer in their custody.

In a few cases, families obtained official documents confirming that their relative was in custody (see the case of Salah Saker, below) or slips authorizing a visit to their sons in prison (see the case of Fouad Lakel, below), only to be told later that authorities no longer knew the whereabouts of the person in question.

In some cases, the victim was arrested along with a spouse or brother, or neighbors, who were later freed from security-force custody. Rached Sassene (see above) was arrested with his wife, who was later released. Fayçal Benlatreche was arrested with his brother Boubaker at their home in Constantine on March 12, 1995. Boubaker was tried one month later and released from custody but Fayçal, a nineteen-year-old student at the time, has not been seen again. Mohamed Grioua, Mourad Kemouche, and Djamel Chihoub were arrested in a mass round-up in Baraki on May 16, 1996; other young men were later freed, but these three "disappeared" (see below).

In at least two cases, Algerian newspapers published reports of the person's arrest by police before all traces of the person vanished (see the cases of Aziz Bouabdallah and Mustapha Ferhati, below).

It is rarely possible to confirm why particular individuals are targeted for "disappearance" because they are never formally charged and the act is never acknowledged. Based on the available evidence there is no doubt that "disappearances" were perpetrated mainly as a tool in the government's battle against the Islamist insurgency. The evidence to support this conclusion includes what is known about the identities of the victims and the context of the arrests.

The vast majority of "disappearances" occurred in those wilayas (provinces) that were hit hardest by political violence, notably Algiers, Tipaza, Constantine, Blida, and Médéa. In some cases, the victim's past political activities or links of kinship, friendship, or acquaintance with suspected militants provides circumstantial evidence. Mohamed Bounsah (see below) had two brothers who had joined armed groups when he was seized in a police round-up and "disappeared." Mathematics teacher Salah Saker and U.S.-trained rheumatologist Charif Benlahreche, both of Constantine, had both stood as FIS candidates in the December 1991 legislative elections (see below). Others were known sympathizers with the Islamist cause, or been previously incarcerated for suspected Islamist sympathies or activities.

In some cases, the person was arrested shortly after the occurrence nearby of an attack on members of the security forces. For example, Ridha Boucherf (see below) was arrested after a policeman was slain in his neighborhood.

But in many cases, the family has professed ignorance as to why their relative would have been targeted for "disappearance." They deny the person had any political activities, Islamist sympathies, links to armed groups, or past brushes with the law. They say they cannot even speculate as to why their relative was taken. When "disappearances" are as widespread as they have been in Algeria, there can be little doubt that some were carried out indiscriminately, mistakenly, or for motives having little to do with the counter-insurgency campaign.

The "disappeared" come from all walks of life and all professions. They range in age from early teens to the seventies. About one-third come from greater Algiers; the other two-thirds from the rest of the country. About half were arrested in their homes, the rest at their place of work or elsewhere. They are predominantly men, but there are scores of missing women as well.38

14 Human Rights Watch interview with Bariza Zaier in Hamma Bouziane, November 2, 2002.

15 Two executive decrees that address compensation could be interpreted as potentially applicable to the relatives of "disappeared" persons. Executive Decree 99-47 of February 13, 1999, orders compensation for victims of "accidents [sic] occurring in the framework of the anti-terrorist struggle, as well as their beneficiaries." [Article 1] The same decree provides for the compensation of victims of human rights abuses committed by armed groups. An earlier executive decree, number 97-49 of February 12, 1997, also provided compensation to victims of "accidents occurring in the framework of the anti-terrorist struggle." The decrees are online at www.joradp.dz, website of the secretary-general of the Algerian government (retrieved February 20, 2003).

16 In a written response, dated December 27, 1998, to a parliamentary question regarding the failure to grant Somoud legal recognition at a national level, the Interior Minister stated that the government is in the process of reviewing Algeria's laws governing nongovernmental organizations. During the review process, he wrote, decisions on organizations applying for recognition would be delayed.

17 See, e.g., Amnesty International, "Algeria: Assaults against families of the "disappeared" must stop," July 3, 2002, MDE 28/041/2002.

18 N. Amrous, "Marche réprimé," l'Authentique, and Mohamed Mehdi, "Le dossier ne sera pas clos," Le Quotidien d'Oran, November 7, 2002.

19 The gendarmerie (ad-Darak al-Watani) is the main police force responsible for non-urban areas. It falls under the authority of the ministry of defense.

20 Since 1994, militia groups armed by the state have operated in rural areas. Although created to protect communities from attack by armed groups, many of these "self-defense groups" were implicated in human rights abuses, including "disappearances."

21 He is currently free pending an appeal before the Supreme Court. See Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (a joint program of the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organization against Torture), "Instrumentalisation de la justice: les victimes et leurs défenseurs sur le banc des accuses," July 2002. Online at http://www.fidh.org/magmoyen/rapport/2002/alge336obs.pdf (retrieved February 14, 2003).

22 The advance edited version of the rapporteur's report, dated January 7, 2003, is online in French at http://www.unhchr.ch/pdf/chr59/66add1AV_F.pdf (retrieved February 14, 2003).

23 Hasna Yacoub, "Les familles des disparus demandent audience au général major Touati," La Tribune, October 31, 2002.

24 Florence Beaugé, "En Algérie, aucun survivant parmi les disparus de la `sale guerre,'" Le Monde, January 7, 2003.

25 Interviewed in El-Watan, December 11, 2002.

26 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, November 6, 2002.

27 Le Monde, January 7, 2003.

28 Samia Mellal, "L'Etat est responsable des disparus," La Tribune, July 11, 2002.

29 Le Monde, January 7, 2003.

30 Le Monde, January 7, 2003. Ksentini also made similar arguments before Algerian journalists on October 6, 2002. See Mohamed Zaâf, "`L'amnistie, c'est la paix civile,'" Le jeune indépendant, October 7, 2002.

31 See Middle East Watch (now Human Rights Watch), "Human Rights Abuses in Algeria: No One is Spared," A Human Rights Watch Report, January 1994.

32 Code of Penal Procedure, Article 51, as amended. Code de Procédure Pénale (Algiers: Berti Editions, 2000). Also online at the LexAlgeria website, http://membres.lycos.fr/lexalgeria/propen.htm (retrieved February 16, 2003).

33 Amnesty International, "Disappearances" and Political Killings: Human Rights Crisis of the 1990s, A Manual for Action (Amsterdam: Amnesty International, 1994), p.13.

34 "Réponse de la part de Zerhouni à l'interpellation d'un groupe de députés sur la question des personnes disparues," online at http://www.algeria-watch.org/mrv/mrvdisp/zerhouni_100501.htm (retrieved February 14, 2003).

35 Prosecutor Slimi Salah in Larbâa told Human Rights Watch that his office often receives complaints on "disappearances" several years after the occurrence. Interview, May 28, 2000. The Presidents of the previous and current presidential human rights commissions (the ONDH and CNCPPDH) told Human Rights Watch, in May 2000 and November 2002 respectively, that they continued to receive new complaints from families concerning persons who had "disappeared" years earlier.

36 For example, Human Rights Watch heard in October 2002 of a case of a Baraki resident who had been detained in the internment camps set up in the south of the country in 1992-1993. When he did not return home after the camp was closed, his family assumed him to have "disappeared" while in the hands of the security forces. Several years later, he returned home after the President offered an amnesty to surrendering militants.

37 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, November 6, 2002.

38 Algeria Watch, "Les `disparitions' en Algérie suite à des enlèvements par les forces de sécurité,» March 1999, online at http://www.algeria-watch.org/farticle/aw/awrapdisp.htm (retrieved February 14, 2003).

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