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V. CASES

Salah Saker
State gives the family multiple versions of his fate

Salah Saker's family has received no fewer than three "official" versions of what happened during the eight years since he "disappeared": that he had been arrested by police who later transferred him to the custody of military authorities; that he had been kidnapped by an armed group; and that he had been arrested, released, and then gone into hiding.

Saker, who was born in 1957, is a high-school mathematics teacher and father of six. As a FIS candidate in the first round of legislative elections of December 1991, he won 44 percent of the vote and was favorably positioned to win the second round had it not been canceled. When national FIS leaders visited Constantine he served as one of their hosts.

Saker was arrested at home on May 29, 1994. Three years later, after filing a complaint with the Constantine prosecutor's office and making other formal inquiries, his wife, Louisa Bousroual, received her first piece of official information about his fate. It was a police report, dated February 26, 1997, stating that the judicial police of the wilaya of Constantine had arrested Salah Saker before turning him over on July 3, 1994, to the Territorial Center for Investigations of the Fifth Military Region, also known as the Bellevue military center in Constantine).39 Despite this confirmation that Saker had been turned over to the military, the family's formal complaint, filed with the prosecutor at Constantine's military court, went nowhere, according to the Association of Families of the Disappeared of Constantine. 40

The family also filed a case in a Constantine court asking for the prosecution of those responsible for Saker's abduction.41 On March 20, 1999, Saker's wife was summoned by the investigating judge to discuss the case but has heard nothing since from the court.

On December 10, 1998, Saker's family received a second response concerning him, this time from the ONDH. Replying to the family's complaint of September 27, 1996, the ONDH stated, "After the efforts made by the ONDH and based on the information provided it by the security services, it appears that [Salah Saker] was abducted by an unidentified armed group."

Yet a third version was provided by the government in response to a communication about his case from the U.N. Human Rights Committee. (Saker's wife had petitioned the committee, under the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights (ICCPR), to declare Algeria in violation of several rights set for in the ICCPR, in connection with the "disappearance" of her husband.42) In a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Committee ("note verbale" MSD31012B/MT/No 61) dated January 31, 2002, the government stated that Saker was

arrested in June 1994 by the judicial police of the wilaya of Constantine, who suspected him of being part of a terrorist group that had committed several attacks in the region. After questioning him, and having been unable to establish proof that Salah Saker belonged to the terrorist group being sought, the judicial police decided to release him from garde à vue and to transfer him to the military services of the judicial police, to continue the investigation. After a day-long inquiry, Salah Saker was freed by the military services of the judicial police. He is being sought by virtue of an arrest warrant issued against him by the investigating judge of Constantine, as part of a case involving twenty-three persons, including the aforementioned, all of whom belong to a major terrorist network. This arrest warrant is still in effect because Salah Saker remains at large. He was tried in absentia, along with his co-defendants, on July 29, 1995, by the Criminal Court of Constantine.

None of the communications received by the Saker family tried to reconcile these official accounts concerning his whereabouts.

Mustapha Ferhati
The press reports his arrest, but family is told he died in a clash

Mustapha Ferhati was a twenty-six-year-old apprentice with computers when he was arrested on May 28, 1998, apparently on the street in or near the Garidi neighborhood of Algiers. He had never been in trouble with the law before, according to his brother Hacène.43 There were no witnesses to his arrest, but a friend who roomed with Mustapha was picked up the same day and later released. Three days later, El-Khabar, an Arabic daily based in Algiers, reported that police in Garidi had killed two "terrorists" and arrested "the wanted terrorist" Mustapha Ferhati after a manhunt. "Ferhati belongs to the FIDA organization," El-Khabar reported. (FIDA is the acronym for the French name of the Islamic Front for Armed Jihad.) The same article mentioned a denial by FIDA that the men were affiliated with it.44

Mustapha's brother Hacène cited two possible explanations for his arrest. There had in fact been a clash in the Garidi neighborhood right before he was arrested. In addition, his arrest may have been an act of retribution against a third brother, Hocine, who allegedly belonged to an armed group. After Mustapha's arrest, the family contacted various state authorities but received no official information about his whereabouts until they received a terse, seventy-six word letter dated October 20, 2002, from the National Consultative Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, sent in response to the family's complaint dated November 10, 1999. The commission wrote that "based on information provided us by the security services," Mustapha had been "eliminated in an armed clash with security forces, and that "the permit for burial was issued by the general prosecutor at the Hussein Dey court under number 98/73, and was dated June 14, 1998."

The commission's letter provided no further information about how Mustapha allegedly died, where he was buried, or why the family had not been notified of a death that had allegedly occurred more than four years earlier. The family replied to the CNCPPDH in a letter dated October 23, 2002, citing the above-mentioned news report about Mustapha's arrest as grounds for rejecting the "armed clash" scenario and requesting that the search for him remain open.

Hacène, Mustapha's brother, is a member of the steering committee of SOS Disparus, an Algiers-based advocacy organization composed of relatives of the "disappeared." He said that letters sent by the commission announcing the death of certain "disappeared" persons was a new development. As of late October 2002 such letters had been issued in a handful of cases.

Ksentini, asked about these letters sent by the commission he heads, said he understood the confusion and anger felt by recipients. But, he said, the letters contained all the information the security services had provided to the commission, and the commission was obliged to pass it along to the families.45

Ibrahim Bouachi
Mother who witnesses son's arrest knows his abductors by name

At 9 a.m. on September 20, 1996, Amina Niati was riding a bus with her son, Ibrahim Bouachi, near their home in Haï Hizazta (in the wilaya of Boumerdès), when the bus stopped at a checkpoint. Two armed men, whom Niati identified by name and described as members of a local "self-defense" group, ordered Ibrahim, who was twenty-seven at the time, to accompany them. She followed them on foot to a local police station, but was unable to learn anything then or since despite making inquiries in several places. When she sought information from a relative who is a police chief in the region, he responded by slapping her, she said. Ibrahim, an unmarried mason, had been previously imprisoned for four months. Niati said she did not know why he had been taken, other than to speculate that it was because he served as a muezzin in a mosque at a time when pious Muslims were under suspicion. The ONDH informed her that Ibrahim had been arrested and released, she said.46

Riad Boucherf
A policeman is killed; neighborhood youths are rounded up and one "disappears"

Fathma Zohra Boucherf, a seamstress and vice-president of SOS Disparus, meticulously recorded everything that happened since her son Riad stepped out of their home on the morning of July 25, 1995, and never returned. Riad, she said, was twenty-one at the time and had never been in trouble with the law:

We live in Les Anaseer housing development in Kouba (Algiers). That morning, I had asked Riad to do me a favor and go out and buy some buttons. He didn't want to do it. He said he wanted to go out with a couple of his friends, and went out.

Later that day, a woman from the neighborhood came and asked me, Did Riad come home? When I said no, she took me to her daughter, who told me what she had seen: At about 11 in the morning, about twenty-five meters from our front door, four plainclothes police, with guns drawn, had knocked down and handcuffed Riad and his two friends, Farid Bourdib and Kamal Bennani. The police put the three in the trunks of the two unmarked cars they came in, a Renault Express and a dark-colored Renault 19.

The police who arrested Riad are known in the neighborhood; they are from the local station, Old Kouba, the 17th arrondissement. The woman who saw it told me, "The fiancé of Suheila arrested your son." Suheila is the sister of the policeman Yadel Halim. Yadel, who also worked in the 17th arrondissement station, had been assassinated on the street ten or twelve days earlier. The local police had sworn to avenge his death.

Five days later, the police arrested Riad's older brother Amin. The "fiancé of Suheila" was among the men who took him. They came in a Renault Express and put Amin in the trunk when they drove away. About sixteen days later, Amin was released, along with Riad's friends Farid and Kamal.

Amin said he had not seen Riad in detention, but a man named Mohamed Tablot told Amin that he had seen Riad in a cell in the 17th arrondissement station, and that Riad had been tortured. Before Amin was freed, a policeman named Saïd, who's known in the neighborhood, told him, If your brother comes home, let us know.

After Riad's friends Farid and Kamal were released, they told me that they had been separated from Riad after their arrest and had lost track of him.

Two days after Amin's release, I went to the police and asked where was Riad. They denied arresting him and even pretended that they were looking for him. On August 11, at 2 in the morning, two policemen from the 17th arrondissement station burst into our apartment and demanded Riad. I answered that he had been in their hands for eighteen days, and that there were witnesses who could prove it. They did not insist and left saying they would find him. Later, I met a policeman who told me he had seen Farid's and Kamal's names on a registry at the station but not Riad's.

I went looking at other police stations and wrote to all the authorities. Five months after Riad's arrest, some women paid me a visit. They live in my general neighborhood. They told me my son was in Serkadji prison [Algiers]. I went to court to get permission to visit but was told his name was not registered. So I went to the prison. I asked the guard to check for his name, but that didn't lead anywhere.

The first response I got was a visit to my house in June 1996 by gendarmes who were investigating my complaint. I told them about Kamal and Farid, and they went and took their testimony, too. They even went to the prison to get the testimony of Farid, who was in jail at the time for petty crime. When I got no reply I filed a complaint and on December 15, 1996, the gendarmerie of `Ain Najaa [a major military complex outside Algiers] summoned me. An officer there asked me, Did you write to the President of the Republic? I said I had, and I even told them about Kamal and Farid, who could testify. I also told him about a third witness, a young man from the al-Afia neighbhood, whom my son Amin had met while in detention, who told Amin that he had been tortured during six days in the same police station as Riad. The officer said I could bring this young man to testify.

Amin said he only knew the young man by sight, so I took Amin to al-Afia to look for him. It took us three days to find him but when we did he agreed to testify. On December 21, 1996, I brought the young man, whose name is Mohamed Tablot, to the gendarmerie, and they took his statement. He told about being tortured alongside Riad, and how they had taken him [Tablot] at 3 in the morning to the tomb of Yadel [the slain policeman], which is in a cemetery next to the police station, and asked him where he wanted to be buried. Tablot swore to them he didn't know anything about Yadel.

The three witnesses were summoned several times and each time gave their testimonies. The gendarmerie of Kouba summoned us four times. Finally, Tablot told me he had grown tired of testifying without seeing any results.

I also filed a complaint at the prosecutor's offices in Hussein Dey and in Algiers. In November 1996, after I wrote to the Ministry of Defense, I was summoned to the military base in Beni Messous. I told them the story. A few days later, some agents from Military Security in plainclothes visited our home. I wasn't there, but my daughter gave them all the details.

On December 31, 1996, three youths from our neighborhood were tried at the court on Abane Ramdane Street (downtown Algiers), after being detained for thirteen months, and acquitted. But their absent co-defendants were sentenced to life terms in absentia. Riad was listed among those convicted in absentia.

After that trial, I got letters from officials. The ONDH sent me a letter in 1999 saying that Riad was not in detention and not being sought. The Mediator of the Republic [an ombudsman's office that existed at the time but has since been closed] wrote me [in a letter dated February 23, 1997] that he had received my complaint and was looking into it.

In August 1997 I saw the prosecutor general. All the mothers come every Sunday and Wednesday to the court, everyone knows us. When it was my turn, the prosecutor did not even look up. He said, If it's about your son, it's not worth your coming all the time, there's nothing I can do.

I was angry. I said to him, You tell those who don't have any witnesses that you can't help them, but I have witnesses, people who live in the neighborhood, the boys who were arrested with Riad and then released, the guy who was in the same lock-up as Riad. I think that's sufficient. The policemen are well known.

The prosecutor told me to bring him copies of their statements. So I got copies and brought them to his secretary. But nothing happened. The police issued a statement denying that Riad was ever arrested or in their custody. I got a copy. It's dated September 9, 1997.

In February 2002 the prosecutor summoned me and asked if I had any new information about Riad. I said, No, but it is not my job to conduct the investigation into a person who "disappears." It is your job. The prosecutor opened Riad's file and said, I see that your son is a terrorist. I replied, Of course he's a terrorist - to you, anyone who "disappears" is a terrorist. But this country has a judicial system. If someone is a terrorist let him be put on trial.

Since then there have been no traces of Riad. Still, I will never stop looking for my son, until my last breath.47

Fouad Lakel
Mother gets permit to visit son in prison, but he has "disappeared"

Fouad Lakel was eighteen when arrested in a round-up in the Algiers neighborhood of Kouba in May 1992. He was jailed until his December 1993 trial and conviction by a special court for "terrorist" offenses. The court sentenced him to fifteen years in prison.

Fouad's mother, Zakia Belkhaznadji, narrates what happened to her son:

Shortly after his conviction Fouad was transferred from Serkadji prison [in Algiers] to Tazeult [near the city of Batna, about 400 kilometers east of Algiers]. The authorities did not inform us of his transfer; I learned it via another prisoner. I visited him there on February 4, 1994. It was a normal visit. But it was the last time I saw him. One month later there was the big escape from Tazeult.48 I went back to Tazeult to try to visit him but they didn't let me. The guards took my information, but they wouldn't confirm Fouad was there. I wrote to all the prisons asking if they had Fouad.

In 1995 the wife of a prisoner told me my son was back in Serkadji but would be transferred again soon.49 Another woman, from [the city of] Khenchela, came to me and said her brother, a prisoner, told her Fouad had just been in Serkadji and would be transferred back to Tazeult.

I went to the Algiers court and obtained from the prosecutor's office a permit to visit Fouad. It is dated July 25, 1995, and says he is in Serkadji prison. I went but he wasn't there. I got another permit to visit, dated August 28, 1995. The court gave me two more permits in 1996 to visit him in Serkadji, but they didn't have him. On July 8, 1996, I got a permit to visit him that says he was in Tazeult prison. So I traveled to Tazeult but the receptionist there told me there was no Lakel Fouad there. He suggested I check the central prison in [the nearby city of] Batna. So I went but he wasn't there either.50

I kept on searching, but there was no further information about Fouad. In July 2002 the prosecutor at the Algiers summoned me. I went to see him and he told me that Fouad had escaped from Tazeult prison and joined the terrorists, and had been killed. It was the first time anyone told me he was dead. I refused to accept or even to react to this information. I simply asked him to prove it and reminded him about the permits the court had given me to visit my son in Serkadji, long after the escape from Tazeult. I had already provided the court with copies of the permits. He asked me to provide him with the originals of the permits, but I refused because if they kept them I would be left with no proofs.51

Belkhaznadji has received no further information about her son.

Charif Benlahreche
Chief Rheumatologist arrested at his hospital and "disappears"

Charif Benlahreche, a French- and American-trained physician born in 1953, had won sixty-seven percent of the vote in his district as the FIS candidate in the first round of legislative elections on December 26, 1991. In January 1992 the elections were halted, and later that year, authorities detained Benlahreche for five days and confiscated his passport. In June 1992 he received a Human Rights Watch researcher visiting Constantine, and provided him with information about human rights conditions.

On November 8, 1994, men in plainclothes approached Benlahreche at Constantine Hospital, where he was chief of rheumatology, and instructed him to follow them. He had been visiting another unit, and had to walk with the plainclothesmen some 200 meters through the hospital, according to his brother, Mohamed-Tahar Benlahreche.52 During that walk he told colleagues he passed that he had been told to follow these men. Outside, no one saw what happened to him. His car was taken that day.

The family filed a complaint before the court but could not get witnesses from the hospital who were willing to testify, "because that was the year everyone was terrorized," said Charif's brother Mohamed-Tahar. However, a released prisoner, Boubaker Benlatreche, reported sharing a cell with Charif in the Bellevue military compound in March 1995. In response to the family's complaints, authorities responded initially that they had conducted an investigation but had not located Benlahreche. Later, they replied that he was being sought by law-enforcement authorities. There have been no further traces of him for eight years.

Mohamed Grioua, Mourad Kemouche, and Djamel Chihoub
Police round-up youths in a "hot" neighborhood; many never return

On the morning of May 16, 1996, combined security forces, operating in both plainclothes and in uniform, conducted a major raid in the working-class Algiers suburb of Baraki, known as a stronghold of Islamist support. Some were later released from prison; others were never heard from again.

Among the latter is Mohamed Grioua, a bachelor who was then about thirty. Mohamed's mother said he was arrested outside and that she did not see his arrest, but that neighbors had. When she came out of her home, the troops, at least one of whom was masked, prevented her from following them as they took away the men they had arrested. She looked for Mohamed in various police stations, sent complaints to various ministries, and filed a complaint in court, noting that there were witnesses to the arrest. The court ruled to close the case. Grioua filed an appeal that was pending as of October 2002.53 In a communication dated June 5, 1999, the ONDH had responded to her complaint of August 10, 1996, saying, "Your son is being sought by the security forces pursuant to arrest warrant 999/96."

Mourad Kemouche is another resident of Baraki who "disappeared" in the round-up. Kemouche was twenty-two at the time, and training to become an accountant. His mother, Messaouda Cheraitia, said that the family never received official confirmation of his arrest but that she learned through informal channels that Mourad had been transferred from Baraki to the military detention center known as Châteauneuf and six months later to the one in Ben Aknoun. The family filed a complaint for "illegal detention" and "abduction" with the prosecutor's office in el-Harrache (case no. 252/2000), and provided the court with two signed statements by witnesses prepared to testify. Cheraitia said the court never summoned these witnesses and closed the case on the grounds that the perpetrators were "unknown."54

Also taken in the May 16, 1996 Baraki round-up was Djamel Chihoub, who was nineteen at the time. The security forces told his family they were taking him because his older brother Saïd, who had joined the maquis, was not to be found, according to Djamel's mother, Taous Djebbar.55 On November 14, 1996, military forces seized a third brother, Mourad, shortly before his sixteenth birthday. According to family members, the arresting force was composed of military forces from the Baraki barracks and members of a local self-defense group. The family made several démarches to the authorities that produced only denials that the brothers were in custody. Saïd, the brother in the maquis, was killed by the security forces.

Mohamed Meabiou
Man arrested Wednesday, brought home Thursday for a police search, then "disappears"

Mohamed Meabiou, born in 1961 and was a member of the FIS, though not a leader, his mother, Baya, said. He had never before been in trouble with the law and worked as a custodian at a high school in the Algiers neighborhood of el-Biar.

Baya said her whole family saw the several armed and uniformed policemen who came to their home in Bir Mourad Raïs in Algiers, at 4 a.m. on February 26, 1997, and took Mohamed with them. Other men in the neighborhood were rounded up around the same time. Baya recalled:

The next day, they brought Mohamed back. You could see he had been tortured. He was handcuffed, barefoot, and his clothes were torn. They searched his room, and found some cassettes, [sermons by] Ali Benhadj, things like that.56 Then they left again with him.

Two months later, my older son Mohamed, saw, at the hospital in Beni Messous where he works, the police agents who had taken his brother. He asked them about Mohamed and they replied, We don't hold onto people; he must be in prison.

But we could not find him anywhere. One man who was arrested in the same round-up as Mohamed, but was released one week later, said he had seen Mohamed in detention but did not know where he went. We filed complaints and were summoned to testify. We went and described how he had been taken. But the case was closed. The ONDH replied to our complaint that Mohamed was neither in prison nor being sought.57

Aziz Bouabdallah
Despite eyewitnesses and press coverage, a court rules the abductors are "unknown"

Aziz Bouabdallah, a journalist with the Arabic daily al-Alam as-Siyasi, was arrested on April 12, 1997, from his home in the Bouzareah area of Algiers. A court case filed by his parents went nowhere despite ample evidence that he had been taken by the security forces. According to his mother, Chafia Bouabdallah:

My husband and I and our other four children all saw what happened. The neighbors did too, because when the men arrived they also knocked on the neighbors' doors, saying, "Police! Open!" When my husband opened the door, he didn't know who it was. They took Aziz with them.

El-Watan published an article [shortly after Aziz's arrest] saying that Aziz was being held in connection with an article that was supposedly libelous toward someone. A week later, a relative with police connections told me that Military Security had taken Aziz. The same relative later informed me Aziz would be released after the June 5 [legislative] elections, and that I could bring clothes for him. But after three months there was no more information.58

The parents of Bouabdallah filed a case with the investigating judge of the court of Birmourad Raïs in Algiers concerning his "disappearance," but in 2000 the judge closed the case for lack of evidence. The family filed an appeal but that too was rejected. Bouabdallah's mother told Human Rights Watch that she had appeared before the investigating judge and recounted the events surrounding his "disappearance." The judge asked her no questions other than, "Do you think your son is still alive?" 59 She told Reporters sans Frontières that, as far as she knows, the authorities had not questioned potential witnesses besides herself and her husband.60 The ONDH, for its part, informed the family that the journalist has been kidnapped by an unidentified armed group composed of four men. The ONDH also informed Amnesty International, in a letter dated June 4, 1997, that Bouabdallah had been kidnapped by "unidentified persons," according to the police investigation.

Mohamed Bounsah
Arrested in a big roundup, but court rules his perpetrators "unknown"

The availability of witnesses to the November 26, 1994, arrest of Mohamed Bounsah did not prevent the court from closing the "illegal detention" and "abduction" case filed by his father, Ahmed Bounsah. Mohamed, a forty-year-old engineer and father of four, was arrested in a sweep carried out at 8 a.m. by uniformed forces in the "December 11" apartment block (cité) in `Ain Binyan, west of Algiers. Other men arrested in the round-up were later freed. But Mohamed was transferred to the custody of Military Security, according to information received by the family, and subsequently "disappeared." Ahmed speculated that his son was taken because two of his brothers had joined armed groups. Witnesses to Ahmed's arrest were willing to testify as to what they saw, the father said.61 But on September 23, 2002, an investigating judge at the Court of Cherarga closed the case on the grounds that the perpetrators were "unknown."62

Relizane: Where the accused perpetrators walk free

Relizane, a city of about 80,000 between Algiers and Oran, is the capital of the wilaya of the same name that was particularly hard-hit by political violence during the mid-1990s. Massacres in remote areas during the last week of December 1997 and the first week of January 1998 cost the lives of hundreds of impoverished peasants. Both armed groups and state-sponsored "self-defense" organizations carried out atrocities against the local civilian population.

Mohamed Smaïn, local representative of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, has documented over 200 "disappearances" in the wilaya of Relizane between late 1993 and 1997; not one of the missing persons has since been located. Many relatives of the "disappeared" say they witnessed the arrests and can name the perpetrators. Often they point the finger at ex-mayor El-Hadj Fergane and members of the armed "self-defense" group he directed. Fergane and his associates, according to Smaïn and some families interviewed by Human Rights Watch, imposed a reign of terror on the city between 1994 and 1996, robbing, summarily executing, and "disappearing" suspected Islamists and those with whom he had scores to settle. Early in the conflict, Fergane himself lost a close relative in an attack carried out by an armed group. Smaïn described the setting in Relizane:

The FIS had won the local elections in Relizane in 1990. But the FIS town council was evicted and in February 1994 Fergane was appointed DEC [a mayor appointed by the state to replace the elected mayor]. Even before he was appointed mayor he had headed "les groupes anti-terroristes, known as the "GATs," a kind of armed civilian group that operated only in Relizane. Then, as mayor, he had under his orders 450 "patriotes" throughout the wilaya.63 Their actions prompted a number of families to file formal complaints. Those complaints eventually reached the President's office, and [President Liamine] Zeroual ordered a serious investigation.64

In April 1998 Fergane was arrested on suspicion of complicity in grave abuses, which were detailed in press articles at the time.65 But he was released shortly thereafter and, while eventually forced to quit as mayor, he has never been formally charged with any crimes. Today, he lives in a well-guarded residence for officials and security force members in the center of Relizane. He did not respond to numerous requests to be interviewed when Human Rights Watch visited Relizane in November 2002. However, in January 2003 he categorically denied to Le Monde the accusations against him, saying "I never arrested or detained people. What the families are telling you is false.... The truth will be known one day. I have a clear conscience."66

Meanwhile, Smaïn was convicted by a Relizane court for defaming Fergane and other members of local "self-defense" groups (see above). At Smaïn's trial, relatives of the "disappeared" testified that Fergane's group had abducted their relatives. One relative pointed to one of the plaintiffs present in the courtroom as the abductor of his brother. During its visit to Relizane Human Rights Watch interviewed several eyewitnesses who said they saw Fergane on the scene when their relatives were arrested. Smaïn is free pending appeal of his conviction.

Here is a sample of cases from Relizane:

Moustapha and Jilani Frih are two brothers who "disappeared" on August 17, 1996. Two months earlier they had both been arrested and detained for two weeks. According to their mother, Aïcha Daghane, Moustapha, a paramedic born in 1967, had been a FIS activist when the party was legal. He is married but has no children. Jilani, four years his junior, is an unmarried merchant and was not politically active prior to his arrest. The two brothers live in the Cité Intissar in Relizane. Their mother recalls what happened:

At midnight on August 17, Fergane and his militia broke down the door of our home. There were fourteen of them. Some were armed. Some were wearing military uniforms, others were in plainclothes. They took eight million centimes (the equivalent of U.S. $800) from us and a telephone. They went to the home of our neighbor, Haoui Ali, to get Moustapha and then tied him and Jilani up with a cord and put them in the trunk of their car. It was a car that belongs to the municipality. They also took my husband, Djelloul Frih, with them and drove off. A group from military security was waiting for them about 150 meters away. One ordered them to release my husband, who came home. Then Fergane's men drove away, I don't know where. We filed complaints: The gendarmerie took statements from family members and from the neighbor's wife, but it led nowhere.67

Belkacem Rachedi presented a testimony written in English to Human Rights Watch regarding the "disappearance" of his father, Mohamed Rachedi:

On Wednesday, 2 August 1995, our house situated in the commune of Sidi M'hammed Benaouda [twenty kilometers south of the city of Relizane] was surrounded by a group of about twenty armed persons. The majority of them wore military uniforms. It was 2 a.m. Some of them climbed the walls and came down in the courtyard of the house, then they threatened us and forced us to open the door because we refused at the beginning to do so. When their comrades came in, they carried a harsh search of our home. They messed up the rooms and stole 100,000 dinars [about U.S. $1,000]....

Then they snatched my father, Rachedi Mohammed, an old man of seventy-one years, suffering from diabetes, rheumatism, and who had problems of sight.... They did not give him time to put on respectable clothes, to take his glasses or even his medicines....

[They were] commanded of course by Fergane Mohamed (the ex-mayor of Relizane)68.... [W]e went to inform the gendarmerie...But when we told them what happened and that my father was kidnapped by forces of security, they falsified the truth ... [and] told us that the group who did that was a group of armed Islamists (terrorists) and that they could do nothing to help us.... Since that day, we have not heard anything about him.

Families in Relizane also accuse the police, military security, and gendarmes of perpetrating "disappearances." The wives of brothers Habib and Safi Sadji witnessed their separate arrests eight months apart, and both wives accuse the Military Security of responsibility. Leila Osmane, wife of Habib Sadji, described what she saw on August 16, 1994:

It was about noon. Military Security, the police, and the gendarmes had surrounded the entire neighborhood near the army barracks in Relizane. A police car passed us and I heard someone inside saying, That's him, Sadji Habib. They jumped out, struck him with the butt of a gun, and took him with them. There were eight of them in the car. They were from Military Security but they were not from Relizane. Their car had an Oran license plate. I could not see where they were taking him. For two years after he was taken, I heard rumors that he was in Mers el-Kebir [a military facility]. So I went there but they told me he was not there. I filed a complaint with the ONDH. They informed me that they did not find him.69

Osmane noted that after Habib's arrest, his salary and the family's medical coverage that he received through his job were cut off - the fate of nearly all families who worked for public-sector jobs before they were "disappeared."

Osmane's sister-in-law Fatiha Kalkoul describes what happened to her husband, Safi Sadji (Habib's older brother), who was taken on April 8, 1995. Safi worked as a technician at the water utility. They have two children, who were about four and one when their father was taken.

It was 11:30 and Safi was at his father's house in Relizane, sleeping. Someone knocked the door and Safi opened it. It was Commander Moustapha, from the local Military Security bureau. He was not masked. Eight men entered and searched the house. Half of them were masked. They wore proper green army uniforms. Safi's mother, his father, his brothers, and I were all at the house and saw what happened. The soldiers all had kalashnikovs. Moustapha gave the orders. They searched and didn't find anything, but they took my earrings. Safi got dressed and they took him. There were two armored cars outside and a white [Renault] Express. They did not tell us where they were taking him.

We wrote to everyone. The ONDH replied that they did not find him. We went to the Military Security bureau in Relizane but they did not provide any information.

This was the only time that Safi was arrested. He had no problems with the authorities. He was a FIS sympathizer, but no more than anyone else. Everyone in Relizane was with the FIS at the time.70

"Disappearances" Decline but Secret Detentions Continue

The number of Algerians who have "disappeared" after being arrested since 2000 appears to be extremely small. However, Algerian security forces continue to make arrests in a manner that violates Algerian law and international standards, and that puts the detainee at risk of "disappearing."

Article 51 of the Code of Penal Procedure states that the police must "immediately" inform the prosecutor's office when they decide to hold someone in custody. That person must be brought before a judge within forty-eight hours, a period that is extended to twelve days in cases in which the government alleges "terrorism" or "subversion."

This statute, which allows police to hold a suspect up to twelve days in garde-à-vue (pre-arraignment) detention with no right to consult a lawyer, is incompatible with Algeria's obligations under international human rights law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires that detainees be brought "promptly" before a judge or other officer authorized to exercise judicial power, a requirement that the U.N. Human Rights Committee has interpreted to mean within "a few days" (General Comment 8 interpreting Article 9 of the ICCPR). The U.N. Human Rights Committee has also urged that persons under arrest have "immediate" access to counsel.71

Algerian law does, however, provide a detainee the right to communicate with his or her family. Under Article 51, the detaining officer, "while protecting the confidentiality of the investigation," is "obligated to grant to the person held in garde à vue [pre-arraignment] detention all means for enabling him to communicate immediately and directly with his family and to receive their visits."

In practice, the arresting force often declines to identify itself when it arrives in plainclothes. Detainees are often held incommunicado beyond the twelve-day legal limit before they are brought before a judge. During that period, the family is often unable to obtain any official information about the person's whereabouts.

Kamel Boudahri remains unaccounted for three months after his arrest on November 13, 2002. According to a communiqué issued by the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights and dated December 6, 2002,72 at 4:30 p.m., seven armed men in plainclothes arrived at the home of the Boudahri family in the city of Mostaghanem. Refusing to identify themselves, they handcuffed Mohamed Boudahri and his twenty-four-year-old younger brother Kamel, a university student, and took them away in an unmarked, grey Ford and a white Peugeot 205. Mohamed returned home at 9 that evening, saying that he and his brother had been taken to a military base, and that he had been interrogated and released. The next day, at 2 a.m., the arresting officers returned to the family home and informed the brothers' mother that Kamel had escaped from them. Kamel's father went to the local military headquarters and was told that his son had escaped and that he had apparently the maquis in the wilaya of Relizane, in the company of two other wanted persons. The father's inquiries with various authorities have yielded no further information on his whereabouts.

Fayçal Khoumissi "disappeared" after his arrest - until an ex-prisoner informed his family many months later that he was in prison. In November 2000 four armed men in plainclothes driving an unmarked car had detained him on a street in el-Harrache, near Algiers, according to Mahmoud Khelili, a human rights lawyer based in el-Harrache. Previously, Khoumissi had been in pretrial detention on terrorism-related charges, from October 1998 until February 2000, when he was acquitted and released.

After Khoumissi was seized on the street in November 2000 his family did not know his whereabouts. An investigating judge at the Court of Hussein Dey issued arrest warrants for him, dated January 2, 2001, and June 26, 2001. Then, on July 20, 2001, Le Soir d'Algérie reported that the security forces had killed a "dangerous terrorist" named Fayçal Khoumissi, who was wanted for killing a policeman in November 2000.73 It was only thanks to a tip from a freed prisoner that Khoumissi's family learned later that he was in fact alive and being held in El-Harrache prison on new charges. As of October 2002 he was still there, awaiting trial, according to Khelili.

On June 25, 2002, Mohammed Yahi was arrested by plainclothes armed men who were recognized by his family members as members of the local Military Security office. They did not give an explanation for Yahi's arrest or disclose where they were taking him. Yahi, an employee in a butcher shop in the city of Dellys, was held beyond the twelve-day legal limit before being brought before a judge. During this time he was held incommunicado and his family was not informed of his whereabouts. It was only at the end of July that a relative was able to visit him in Blida military prison.74

Ex-prisoner Omar Toumi of Algiers went on an errand on January 26, 2002, and failed to return home. His family contacted the police but received no official confirmation he had been detained until mid-February, more than twelve days after his arrest. Toumi was eventually brought to court and charged with security offenses. Omar's brother, Saïd, "disappeared" in 1994, after being arrested at his workplace by armed men, some of them in uniform.75

Another ex-prisoner, Boubaker Kamas, was arrested on January 9, 2002. Three men who identified themselves as agents of Military Security took him from his home in el-Khroub, in the wilaya of Constantine. The authorities denied all knowledge of his arrest and it took more than two weeks for his family to learn that he was being held in the prison of Skikda, according to Amnesty International.76

In March 2000, President Bouteflika declared:

[C]ontrol by the judiciary of the criminal investigative branch of the police services, already provided for by the law, should be strengthened, and the mechanisms necessary to such an effective control must be urgently put in place. The rights granted by the law to individuals held in preventive custody, namely, the right to be examined by a physician and the right to communicate with their family members, should be effectively exercised.77

The cases described above all took place since President Bouteflika urged respect for these safeguards. They show that the laws and practices that can prevent "disappearances" continue to be violated. While the security forces have largely refrained from carrying out new "disappearances" as the intensity of Algeria's conflict has diminished, the path is wide open to resurrecting the practice.

Persons Abducted by Armed Groups and Still Missing
In addition to the "disappearances" where the available evidence points to security forces or their allies as the perpetrators, there are hundreds if not thousands of abducted and still-missing Algerians where the evidence points to armed groups as the perpetrators. No organization or government agency has compiled a nominative list of such cases, and there is no reliable estimate of the magnitude of the problem. Human Rights Watch requested statistics on this phenomenon from the government of Algeria in its letter of May 16, 2002, but received no reply.

One nongovernmental organization founded in 1996 by families of missing persons, Somoud (Arabic for "steadfastness"), claims that the number of Algerians kidnapped by armed groups since 1992 is around 10,000, of which more than half remain missing. Rabha Tounsi, national secretary of the National Organization of Families and Beneficiaries of Victims of Terrorism (ONVTAD), told a Human Rights Watch delegation on May 22, 2000, that there were about 4,200 cases of people abducted by the armed groups whose bodies had not been found.

Relatives of missing persons have a common anguish regardless of whether the perpetrators were the security forces or the armed groups that are fighting the government. They confront many of the same economic problems when the missing person is a family bread-winner, and many of the same legal problems when the person is missing but not legally dead.

According to Somoud's founders, the families of persons abducted by armed groups also share with families of the "disappeared" a conviction that the government has failed to conduct serious investigations to locate their missing relatives.

Adnane Bouchaïb, a young lawyer in el-Harrache, is secretary-general of Somoud. On December 16, 1995, his father, Mokhtar Bouchaïb, born in 1932, was kidnapped at a roadblock set up by an armed group outside the city of Médéa. Witnesses to the abduction told Adnane that the perpetrators selected their victims, holding some but releasing others, some after whipping them.78 Bouchaïb senior was head of the Médéa bar association, which encompassed five wilayas, and was probably considered "an enemy" by his captors, Adnane said. One of the persons briefly held and then released by the kidnappers was a friend of Adnane's brother. He confirmed that the captors were "terrorists," Adnane said. Witnesses reportedly recognized one of them to be an Islamist, but did not know his name.

Adnane Bouchaïb alleges that authorities treated the case with a lack of seriousness. When he first went to the office of the gendarmerie of Médéa to report the kidnapping, a person inside spoke to him through a small hole in the door and told him to go away. It was only one week later, with the help of some personal connections, that Adnane got the authorities to fill out a missing-person report. Adnane told Human Rights Watch that many families that had contacted Somoud regarding kidnapped relatives had never filed a missing report with authorities, either because they were afraid to do so or because they had tried to do so but had been refused.

The police are supposed to open an investigation upon receipt of a missing-person report. But after six months, the authorities delivered to Adnane nothing but a form stating what he already knew: that his father had been kidnapped by Islamists. There was no indication of additional information produced by the investigation. His father's automobile was never found.

In 2000 Adnane initiated the legal process to obtain the death certificate to which the family is eligible after a person has been declared missing for four years. When Adnane applied for the certificate, he said the judge asked him to bring a copy of the prosecutor's report stating that the investigation has been completed and established that his father is dead. Unaware that such a report existed, Adnane went to the criminal court of Médéa, and discovered a verdict recorded in 1997. It convicted four persons in absentia and sentenced them to death for having kidnapped and murdered Mokhtar Bouchaïb, among other persons. According to Adnane, "The four were well-known terrorists who had been in the maquis [i.e. active in rebel groups] for a long time, and had been sentenced to death in other cases."

The written verdict infuriated Adnane. "It was only four sentences long," he said and there was no indication that authorities had conducted any investigation. Instead, "they found it convenient to take some names of victims and terrorists and tie them together in order to close the case."

The lack of investigations into kidnappings is a problem that Somoud is challenging in its work. Algeria's penal code permits victims or their relatives to file a complaint for a crime like kidnapping with an investigating judge and request an investigation. The investigating judge studies the complaint and decides whether to open an investigation. The judge then turns over the file to the state prosecutor who decides whether to file charges, after considering the recommendations made by the judge.

Since May 2000 Somoud has prepared and submitted on behalf of families sixteen complaints for kidnappings before investigating judges in Algiers, Médéa and Blida, according to Bouchaïb. As of October 2002 they had received no response in any of the cases.

Omar Ourad was kidnapped from his home in Baraki, near Algiers, by an armed group on August 13, 1994 and never seen again. He was forty-eight at the time. His son, Yassine Ourad, a thirty-year-old photographer, recalled what happened that day:79

At 9:40 p.m. the whole family was at home when two men with kalashnikovs came into our courtyard. My father was sitting in this room. The men asked for IDs. About ten more men entered the courtyard. All were wearing some military clothes, but none had on a complete uniform. Two wore bulletproof vests. One had a radio with a long antenna. They searched the house. They asked my father if he had any weapons. They asked him for his professional ID.

My father had been in charge of procurement for a construction company. He had just gotten a major promotion. They asked him if he was a policeman. He said no. Then they asked him if he was "Bald Omar." No, he said, I'm Omar Ourad. They took him to the end of our courtyard. As they left they told us, Don't worry, we're just taking him for questioning. They took him in his pajama pants; they didn't let him get dressed.

We didn't recognize any of the men who came. We didn't notice anything particular about their accents. When they immediately asked for ID cards we suspected they were terrorists because we had heard that terrorists steal IDs. But until today we don't know who took him.

Omar's wife, Fatma Zohra Ourad, a teacher of French in the local primary school, remembers:80

We stayed up all night waiting for him to come home. At 6 a.m. I went to the police. They asked, Why didn't you come right away? I told them I was scared. But the police never came to the house to question witnesses or collect evidence. Neighbors had seen the men taking my husband away. All the police did was summon me a few times to show me photos and ask if I recognized any of them as the persons who took my husband. But I didn't.

Ms. Ourad said she had no idea why armed militants abducted her husband. He had at one time worked with the public-sector press distribution agency SNED, she noted, but he had left that job. Much earlier, in the 1970s and 1980s, he had held a position with the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) party.

Rached Zouitene was fifty-six when he was abducted near his home in Baraki on August 28, 1994. Since that day, there have been no clues as to his fate or whereabouts, his wife said.81 But she is certain that it was "the terrorists" who took him. She recalls what happened, based on what witnesses told her:

My husband was in a grocery that belongs to a relative. At 8:30 p.m. a Mazda wagon pulled up. Six or seven young men came out. They were dressed normally in street clothing, but two were wearing bulletproof vests. One had long hair. They were carrying kalashnikovs and revolvers. Four or five neighbors saw it. The men asked for my husband. They were clearly looking for him. They put him in their wagon and left.

The others remained in the store and closed the gate. Five minutes later, a neighbor came by and told me my husband had been taken by the terrorists. I called the police, but they didn't send anyone out to investigate. The police never came to the store and never questioned witnesses. Eight months later, they finally took a statement from me. But they never asked for a description of my husband. I gave them a photo of him.

I also went to see the prosecutor of el-Harrache. But he had no information about my husband, and as far as I could tell, had not opened any kind of investigation. After I filed a complaint with the ONDH, the gendarmerie summoned me for questioning. They told me that terrorists had taken my husband.

I learned of an ex-terrorist who had been active in this region. I approached him and asked if he knew anything about my husband, but he denied it.

Ms. Zouitene does not know why her husband was selected for abduction. She said that he served in the police until 1975 but then left and worked for Neftal, a petroleum company. He was no longer connected in any way with the police.

39 Copy on file at Human Rights Watch. Similar letters, also on file at Human Rights Watch, acknowledge that two other "disappearance" victims from Constantine, Salah Kitouni, a journalist, and Brahim Aouabdia, a tailor and father of six, were in police custody and then handed over to the military for investigation. Kitouni disappeared in 1996, Aouabdia in 1994.

40 Association of Families of the Disappeared of Constantine, "Exposé sommaire sur la situation des disparus de Constantine," April 14, 2002.

41 Case 32/134, filed January 20, 1996, before the investigating judge of the third chambre d'instruction of the Constantine Appeals Court.

42 Bousroual v. Algeria, 992/2001.

43 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 25, 2002.

44 B. Sahil, "Al-majmou'a al-irhabiyya `al-Fida' tanfi kharq al-hudna," El-Khabar, June 1, 1996.

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

46 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 30, 2002.

47 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 25, 2002.

48 On March 10, 1994, some 900 inmates escaped after armed Islamists from outside assaulted the prison, according to press reports at the time. As of ten days later, officials reported capturing 109 escapees and killing sixty-four others. "Security forces kill forty more escaped prisoners," Agence France Presse, March 20, 1994.

49 A prison uprising in Serkadji on February 21-22, 1995, resulted in the deaths of some one hundred prisoners and four guards, and major damage to the prison. See Human Rights Watch, "Algeria: Six Months Later, Cover-up Continues in Prison Clash that Left 100 Inmates Dead," A Human Rights Watch Report, August 1995, vol. 7, no. 5(E), summary online at www.hrw.org/summaries/s.algeria958.html (retrieved February 19, 2003).

50 Copies of all five permits are on file at Human Rights Watch.

51 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 25, 2002.

52 Human Rights Watch interview, Constantine, November 1, 2002.

53 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 25 and 30, 2002.

54 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 25, 2002.

55 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 25, 2002.

56 Benhadj, imprisoned since 1991, is a leader of the banned Islamic Salvation Front.

57 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 25, 2002.

58 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 30, 2002.

59 Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Algiers, April 12, 2002.

60 Reporters sans Frontières, "Algérie: Cinq journalistes disparus: aucune enquête sérieuse menée," (Paris : RSF, February 5, 2001). Online at http://www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=913 (retrieved February 17, 2003).

61 Human Rights Watch interview, Algiers, October 25, 2002.

62 A copy of the decision is on file at Human Rights Watch.

63 "Patriotes" are armed civilians working closely with authorities in the fight against armed groups.

64 Human Rights Watch interview, Relizane, November 3, 2002.

65 See, e.g., Feriel H. and A. Chenaoui, "Maires de Relizane et de Jdiouia: d'autres révélations," Liberté, April 14, 1998.

66 Florence Beaugé, "A Relizane, la sécurité militaire reste au-dessus des lois," Le Monde, January 8, 2003.

67 Human Rights Watch interview, Relizane, November 3, 2002.

68 The letter-writer follows the Algerian practice of listing last names before first names.

69 Human Rights Watch interview, Relizane, November 3, 2002.

70 Human Rights Watch interview, Relizane, November 3, 2002.

71 "The Committee recommends that detention and pre-trial detention should be carried out in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution and the Covenant. It stresses, inter alia, that all persons who are arrested must immediately have access to counsel, be examined by a doctor without delay and be able to submit promptly an application to a judge to rule on the legality of the detention." "Concluding observations of the Human Rights Committee, Georgia," CCPR/C/79/Add.75, May 5, 1997, online at http://193.194.138.190/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/CCPR.C.79.Add.75.En?Opendocument (retrieved February 19, 2003). See also Article 1 of the Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, adopted by the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Havana, Cuba, 27 August to 7 September 1990: "All persons are entitled to call upon the assistance of a lawyer of their choice to protect and establish their rights and to defend them in all stages of criminal proceedings." Online at http://193.194.138.190/html/menu3/b/h_comp44.htm (retrieved February 19, 2003).

72 Online at http://www.algeria-watch.org/mrv/mrvdisp/boudahri.htm (retrieved February 14, 2003).

73 "Alger: Un terroriste abattu," Le Soir d'Algérie, July 20, 2001.

74 Amnesty International Urgent Actions MDE 28/015/2002, July 17, 2002 and 28/018/2002, August 1, 2002.

75 Amnesty International Urgent Actions MDE 28/004/2002, February 14, 2002 and 28/006/2002, February 28, 2002.

76 Amnesty International Urgent Actions MDE 28/002/2002, January 24, 2002 and 28/002/2002, January 28, 2002.

77 "Full text of the concluding remarks made by the President of the Republic, M. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, at a Cabinet meeting held on March 15, 2000." Text provided by the Embassy of Algeria in Washington, D.C.

78 Human Rights Watch interview, Washington, DC, March 29, 2001.

79 Human Rights Watch interview, Baraki, October 30, 2002.

80 Human Rights Watch interview in Baraki, October 30, 2002.

81 Human Rights Watch interview, Baraki, October 30, 2002.

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