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Algeria: Time for Reckoning: Enforced Disappearances in Algeria

Human Rights Watch

2003, Human Rights Watch:

This report is a follow-up to Human Rights Watch's first report on state-sponsored "disappearances," researched during their 1997 mission to Algeria and published in February 1998. That report, published when the issue was first attracting attention in Algeria and abroad, featured twelve case studies as a sample. The focus of the present report is to evaluate everything that Algerian authorities have said and done to address the thousands of outstanding cases of "disappearances" in the past five years. This report also covers the parallel issue of persons who are missing after having been abducted by armed groups fighting the government.

more informationAbstract:

Algerian security forces and their allies, between 1992 and 1998, arrested and made "disappear" more than 7,000 persons who remain unaccounted for to this day. This number exceeds the number of "disappearances" known to have been carried out in any other country, except wartime Bosnia, over the past decade. In addition, armed groups fighting the government kidnapped hundreds if not thousands of Algerians who also remain missing. These acts, systematically committed both by state actors and by organized non-state actors, are crimes against humanity.

Human Rights Watch believes that the solution must include disclosure of the truth regarding what happened to victims of "disappearances," and accountability for the perpetrators. In keeping with principles of international human rights law, an amnesty, if one is ever enacted, should exclude persons responsible for acts of "disappearance." In deliberating over pardons for perpetrators of "disappearances," the extreme seriousness of that crime should be taken into account. A solution that lacks truth and accountability plants the seeds for a repetition of "disappearances" and other atrocities.

more informationTable of contents:

I. Summary

II. Recommendations

    To the Government of Algeria
    To Political Parties in Algeria
    To Armed Groups Implicated in the Abduction of Civilians
    To the European Union and its Member Nations

III. About this Report

    Acknowledgments
    A Note on Terms: "Disappearances" and "Abductions"
    Algeria's International Human Rights Obligations

IV. Introduction

    The Political Setting
    Counting Cases, Identifying Perpetrators

V. Cases

    "Disappearances" Decline but Secret Detentions Continue
    Persons Abducted by Armed Groups and Still Missing

VI. Mass Graves

VII. The Evolution of Government Discourse on Disappearances

    1998: The Government First Acknowledges the Problem
    1998: Government Sets Up Offices in Wilayas to Receive Complaints of "Disappearances"
    1999: The New President Breaks the Taboo
    1998-2003: The Official Statistics, Unverifiable and Inconsistent

VIII. The Role of the Courts

    The Failure of Courts to Investigate "Disappearances"

IX. State Human Rights Monitoring Bodies: Watchdogs or Mere Mailboxes?

    The CNCPPDH Replaces the ONDH

X. The International Community on a Treadmill

    The European Union
    The U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances
    Cooperation with International NGOs Regarding "Disappearances"

XI. Other Countries Show Possible Paths on "Disappearances"

XII. Appendices

Appendix 1: Algerian Penal Code Articles Governing Illegal Arrests and Confinement

Appendix 2: Letter to Algeria's Minister of Justice

Appendix 3: Partial List of "Disappeared" Whose Fate Has Been Clarified

Appendix 4: Contradictory Information in Two Cases of "Disappearances"

XIII. Photographs

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