Algeria’s Human Rights Crisis Human Rights Watch SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS On July 20-21, 1998, an Algerian government delegation met with the United Nations Human Rights Committee to discuss Algeria's second periodic report regarding its implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In its oral presentation to the committee on July 20, the Algerian delegation insisted that "there was no crisis of human rights in Algeria" but rather "a terrorist phenomenon which violated human rights." After its review, the committee, in unusually strong language, characterized the Algerian situation precisely as a "widespread human rights crisis." The Human Rights Committee is a body of eighteen independent experts, elected by the 140 countries that are states parties to the ICCPR to monitor the implementation of the covenant (for a description of the committee and the text of the ICCPR, see Appendices 2 and 3 of this report). The committee's findings draw badly needed attention to the plight of ordinary Algerians who have been caught up in a vicious cycle of violence. Security forces have been implicated in torture, forced disappearances, arbitrary killings, and extrajudicial executions on a scale that can only be characterized as systematic. Women and men, young and old, have been brutally slaughtered by armed groups. Insurgent groups have engaged in a campaign of terror and intimidation against women and girls in particular, many of whom have been abducted, sexually assaulted, and sometimes mutilated by members of armed groups. The committee, in condemning the massacres of civilians, expressed particular concern that "women have been the victims of not only killings but also of abduction and rape and severe violence." It also called attention to the apparent failure of the authorities in a number of massacre situations to intervene to protect the population or to apprehend the perpetrators, and considered that allegations of involvement or collusion by the security forces themselves in these atrocities were widespread and persistent enough to require independent investigation. (The committee's "Concluding Observations" are reprinted as Appendix 1 of this report.) The committee's report comes as the Algerian government continues to resist independent scrutiny of this "widespread human rights crisis." The authorities have stoutly refused to accede to the request of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, that they cooperate with expert U.N. bodies such as the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions. The government has similarly ignored requests by independent international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to conduct fact-finding missions relating to the most severe abuses. Such credible investigations are critical to ensure that the perpetrators of atrocities and human rights abuses do not continue to enjoy impunity and the victims are not compelled to live in a climate of fear. Algeria did, however, agree to receive a "panel of eminent persons" appointed by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and headed by Mario Soares, the former president of Portugal, which visited Algeria from July 22 through August 4. The secretary general was careful not to describe the mission of the panel in terms of human rights. Rather, its charge was to "gather information on the situation in Algeria and present a report to him, which he will make public." According to Annan's spokesperson, "The government of Algeria has assured the secretary-general that it will ensure free and complete access to all sources of information necessary for the panel to exercise its functions in order to have a clear vision and a precise perception of the reality of the situation in all its dimensions in Algeria today." The other members of the delegation are I.K. Gujral, former prime minister of India, Abd al- Karim al-Kabariti, former prime minister of Jordan, Donald McHenry, former U.S. permanent representative to the U.N., Simone Veil, former French secretary of state, and Amos Wako, attorney general of Kenya and former U.N. special rapporteur on summary and arbitrary executions. At the time of writing, the group had not yet presented its report to Annan. In light of the Human Rights Committee's conclusions, the special panel's handling of Algeria's human rights crisis, a crisis the government insists does not exist, will be closely watched. The diplomats' visit, in any event, should not be seen as a substitute for an in-country investigation by U.N. human rights experts such as the special rapporteurs on torture and extrajudicial executions. The Algerian government's fifty-five page report to the Human Rights Committee, submitted in March and more than two years overdue, described in detail the official bodies established and statutes passed since 1992 with respect to human rights. Human Rights Watch, in the briefing paper it submitted to the committee regarding Algeria's report, examined the discrepancies between the report and actual practices with regard to the gravest human rights abuses, including extrajudicial executions, torture, forced "disappearances," arbitrary arrest and detention, failure to protect the right to life, and restrictions on the rights of freedom of expression, association, and assembly. Because the mandate of the Human Rights Committee is to assess implementation of the ICCPR by the government in question, neither its findings nor the Human Rights Watch submission address in any detail the responsibility of the armed groups for the many atrocities they are alleged (or in some cases claim) to have committed. The committee prefaced its August 4 "Concluding Observations" on Algeria's report by stating that the two days of discussions with government representatives were "characterized by a sense of solidarity by the Committee with the suffering of the Algerian people." However, it found the government's report deficient in its failure to "provide sufficient specific data" and expressed regret "that many of its questions were not fully answered by the Delegation." The committee expressed serious concern regarding the government's compliance with its obligations under the covenant in a number of areas, including those highlighted by the Human Rights Watch submission. Among the committee's most significant conclusions were the following: Massacres of Civilians The committee declared that it was "appalled at the widespread massacre of men, women and children in a great number of villages and towns," and the sexual violence directed against women. The committee went on to express concern "at the lack of timely or preventive measures of protection to the victims from police or military officials in the vicinity and at the persistent allegations of collusion of members of the security forces in terrorist attacks." The committee urged Algeria to conduct independent investigations, and "in all cases of massacres to conduct an independent enquiry into the conduct of the security forces, from the lowest to the highest levels, and where appropriate, to subject them to penal and disciplinary sanctions." Arbitrary Killings and Extrajudicial Executions The committee characterized the government's responses "with regard to innumerable reports" of such killings, some while in custody, as "less than satisfactory"; it urged the government to set up independent mechanisms to investigate such cases, to bring offenders to justice, and to grant access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other independent observers. Torture The committee, while noting the denials of the government, wrote that it was "deeply concerned over persistent allegations of systematic torture" and "deplore[d] the apparent routine acceptance by trial court judges of confessions extracted under duress, even where there is medical evidence of torture...." It urged the government to establish a credible system for monitoring treatment of detainees, to have specific allegations of torture investigated by an impartial body and the results published, and to ensure that officials involved in torture are prosecuted and, if convicted, severely punished. "Disappearances" The committee expressed grave concern at the number of "disappearances" and "the failure of the State to respond adequately, or indeed at all, to such serious violations." The committee urged the Algerian government to establish a central register to record "all reported disappearances and the day to day action taken to retrace the disappeared." It further asked the government to give an account in its next report, due in June 2000, of the number of cases reported, the investigations conducted, and the results achieved. The committee addressed Algerian human rights violations in other areas as well, including issues such as the independence of the judiciary, media censorship, and restrictions on the right to form political parties. With regard to legislation, the committee recommended that Algeria amend its Family Code to eliminate "important areas of inequality" for women, and to revise Penal Code amendments that increased the number of death penalty offenses and extended the time for which a suspect may be held in garde à vue detention.1 The committee also expressed concern that the Arabic Language Decree of July 5, 1998, mandating "the compulsory, immediate and exclusive use of that language in all areas of public activity," would "impede large sections of the population who use Berber or French" in their enjoyment of the rights to free expression, to exchange and receive information, and to participate in public affairs. The committee commended Algeria for several steps the government had taken, including the establishment of the semi-official National Observatory for Human Rights and the National Commission for the Preservation and Promotion of Women. It welcomed the Algerian delegation's undertaking to submit additional written information in response to the committee's questions, and requested that Algeria's next periodic report "should contain material which responds to all the present concluding observations." The committee also requested that this second periodic report and the committee's concluding observations "be widely disseminated among the public at large in all parts of Algeria." An Algerian Foreign Ministry spokesperson characterized the committee's concluding observations as "offensive," and based on "facts that the committee itself recognizes to be allegations and which it accepts without the slightest discernment."2 The head of the Algerian delegation, Mohamed Salah Dembri, declared that the delegation "has called into question and rejected in advance all of the assessments of the experts which are based on allegations generally originating from the four NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and a set of information which has not been cross checked or submitted to cross-examination....we have said in advance that we would consider [the committee's procedure] as null and void because it was not founded on documented proof."3 The eighteen independent experts on the committee are, in the words of the covenant, "persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights" who are elected in their individual capacities to four year terms. As judges, lawyers, and human rights professionals, they are experienced in evaluating the reliability of sources and validity of allegations, and in examining situations such as that of Algeria, in which the government contributes substantially to the obstacles to comprehensive fact-finding and monitoring. The committee's conclusions constitute the most severe indictment by any U.N. body of the Algerian government's human rights practices since the civil strife escalated in 1992. The series of massacres in Algeria that,especially since 1996, have claimed the lives of thousands of innocent women, men, and children, which the government and many outside observers attribute exclusively to armed Islamist insurgent groups, are part of a larger human rights crisis. This larger crisis is characterized by grave and systematic human rights violations by or seemingly with the collusion of the security forces as well as atrocities on a massive scale by armed opposition groups. It is also characterized by a serious deficit of information about what is taking place, who is responsible, and why, in the case of the massacres, the government has been unable to afford protection to Algeria's citizens and residents. This information deficit is the result of a number of factors: One is the terror and repression that have made many citizens afraid of speaking out. Other factors include the restrictive government policies that have severely curtailed access to international human rights observers and journalists, and the government's failure to conduct or allow any credible and transparent investigations. In its successful campaign to preempt any critical resolution at the annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in March and April 1998, the Algerian authorities argued that the crisis was one of terrorism, not human rights, and that the government was nearing its goal of containing this crisis. The authorities adamantly rejected widespread calls for an international inquiry, insisting that the crisis was entirely an internal matter in which the international community had no useful or legitimate role to play. Algeria's obligation to the international community with regard to its human rights record, the government further argued, would be met in its forthcoming report to the Human Rights Committee. Human Rights Watch, in welcoming the findings and recommendations of the U.N. Human Rights Committee, calls attention to the committee's stress on the importance of independent investigations in cases of massacres, arbitrary killings, extrajudicial executions, and "disappearances." The committee further recommends that Algeria allow access to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international observers. Human Rights Watch also shares the concern of the committee with regard to the Algerian government's encouragement of the formation of local militia known as "legitimate defense groups." Given the questionable competence, training, and supervision of these groups, and frequent reports of killings that went beyond self- defense and the limits of the law, Human Rights Watch endorses the committee's recommendation that they be "brought under the strict and effective control of responsible State organs." Human Rights Watch strongly urges Algeria to take steps to implement the committee's recommendations-most urgently those recommendations relating to clear violations of the right to life and the integrity of the person. In particular, Human Rights Watch calls on the Algerian authorities to: · Establish a credible independent body to investigate massacres and other arbitrary killings and extrajudicial executions, to make public its findings, and to refer its findings to the appropriate judicial authorities so that those responsible may be brought to justice. This office or commission should have sufficient resources to carry out its mandate, and the public assurance of President Liamine Zeroual that it will have the power to question government officials and security forces at all levels. · Release unconditionally all persons arbitrarily detained. Establish a public register listing the names, whereabouts, and pertinent details of detention for all persons detained by all branches of the security forces. Investigate allegations of unlawful or arbitrary detention, make the results public, and ensure that persons responsible are prosecuted and, if convicted, punished in accordance with the law. · Establish a credible system for monitoring treatment of all detainees, particularly during the period of garde à vue detention, when torture and abuse of detainees is most common. Ensure that convictions at trials are not based solely on confessions made during garde à vue detention. Communicate to all military, intelligence and security forces, and judicial authorities, that torture will not be tolerated, and that officials who order or condone such actions will be prosecuted and, if convicted, punished in accordance with the gravity of these crimes. ALGERIA: VIOLATIONS OF CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS A Briefing Paper for the U.N. Human Rights Committee July 1998 Human Rights Watch is presenting this document to the Human Rights Committee as it prepares to evaluate Algeria's compliance with its obligations as a State party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). We hope that the information provided in this document and in the appended Human Rights Watch reports will serve the committee in planning questions to present to the Algerian representatives during the July 1998 session. We present here some of the gravest patterns of human rights violations in the period since 1992, the year the committee last evaluated Algeria's record of compliance. These violations include arbitrary arrests, "disappearances," torture, extrajudicial executions and violations of the rights of freedom of expression, assembly, and association. Human Rights Watch has also monitored the brutal and heinous attacks that have been carried out by groups that call themselves Islamist. These attacks have left thousands of men, women and children dead during six years of conflict. Human Rights Watch unequivocally condemns the deliberate and arbitrary killing of civilians by armed groups, security forces, or by any other party. Human Rights Watch has monitored human rights conditions in Algeria since 1990, and last visited the country in April 1997. Since January 1998, when we formally requested permission from Algerian authorities to conduct a mission, we have been effectively barred from entering the country. We nevertheless continue to collect information from persons inside Algeria and from Algerians traveling abroad. We have also corresponded or met with Algerian authorities to raise our concerns. On the occasions when Algerian authorities have responded, the information they furnished to us was almost always lacking in specificity, and sometimes in accuracy, as shown below. We have read Algeria's report to the Human Rights Committee.4 While it describes the official institutions established and laws passed since 1992 with respect to human rights, it overlooks the reality that the laws are not being enforced and the institutions are not functioning in a manner so as to protect those rights. It also overlooks the fact that certain articles in Algerian law and in its constitution conflict with Algeria's obligations under the ICCPR. Violations of the Right to Life Over the last two years, armed groups have attacked villages and hamlets, killing and maiming hundreds of men, women and children in nighttime raids. Thousands have lost their lives. In single incidents, up to 400 people were slaughtered by assailants who used crude weapons and took several hours to carry out their carnage, and then fled without being confronted. In many instances, massacres took place in isolated locations. But in others, they occurred within a few hundred meters of security force barracks and posts. Yet no effort was made by the authorities to halt the attack or apprehend the attackers as they withdrew. The perpetrators of these atrocities are responsible for massive violations of the right to life, which is enshrined in Article 6 of the ICCPR. The repeated failure of the security forces to intervene to prevent the loss of civilian life, despite their proximity to some of the mass killings that have taken place, points to the Algerian government's failure to ensure and protect the right to life and also constitutes a violation of Article 6. One example is the massacre that occurred on the night of September 23, 1997 at Bentalha, a southern suburb of the capital Algiers, in which more than 250 people were killed. One of the survivors, who had fled to a rooftop with other residents, told Human Rights Watch he saw two military armored-personnel carriers while the armed group was assaulting civilians. "They came up to about one hundred meters away from where we were being attacked. Then they turned on their floodlights-I don't know why, since they didn't rescue us. The people started to shout that the military had come to their rescue, but the emirs [leaders of the attackers] responded by urging their men to `work calmly, the military will not come, don't worry.'" The witness and other survivors from Bentalha quoted paramilitary forces saying later that their superiors had not allowed them to confront the attackers because they had not received orders to intervene from the military commanders under whose direction they operate. In explaining instances where massacres took place without any intervention by the security forces to stop or apprehend the attackers, authorities cited the danger to security forces of ambushes and mined roads. But in more than one of the recent massacres, according to survivors who were interviewed later, the security forces made no attempt to reach the scene of violence while it was occurring or to test the roads for mines. For example, survivors from Bentalha told Human Rights Watch of residents who escaped the area by driving out, without incident, along the same road that authorities later claimed were mined. The military's concern for mines as an obstacle to timely intervention was also called into question by the testimony of a former rescue worker, now seeking asylum in a European country, who said he was one of the first people to reach the Algiers suburb of Rais hours after a massacre that claimed the lives of more than 350 civilians on the night of August 29, 1997. He told Human Rights Watch that ambulance workers and firemen had been alerted to an emergency and were told simply to await further orders. "They didn't tell us what had happened. After about one and-a-half hours, they asked us to go to Rais because there had been carnage there and we should go to help the people," he said. "We were the first to arrive at the scene. No cars had arrived there ahead of us. The gendarmerie who came with us were the first security forces to arrive on the scene. The gendarmes did not check for mines." In at least two massacres that occurred in 1998, survivors told reporters that despite the proximity of army barracks and security posts, no one came to their rescue. In Chouardia, a village in Medea province seventy kilometers south of Algiers, more than forty persons were reported killed on April 27. Survivors told the Agence France-Presse the following day that the carnage lasted about three hours and security forces only came four-and-a-half hours after the end of the massacre. One resident was quoted as saying that a paramilitary gendarme post is located one kilometer from the massacre site. The French-language daily La Tribune reported on May 28 that assailants who killed twelve civilians two days earlier in Hammam Melouane, south of Algiers, had slipped past government-backed militia and a military post. "Despite the presence of `self- defense' [paramilitary] groups and a military post near the massacre site, the group [of attackers] slipped into the village through a route that apparently was not patrolled the night of the massacre," the paper said. Regular security forces have engaged in extrajudicial executions. For example, Rachid Medjahed, the alleged mastermind of the assassination of Abdelhaq Benhamouda, head of Algeria's largest workers union, was apparently executed while in custody. Almost one month after the labor leader was gunned down on January 28, 1997,5 Medjahed, who had been in incommunicado detention, "confessed" on Algerian television to his role in the assassination. Soon after, the police showed his family a written confirmation of his death, dated February 26. When they were allowed to see the body they said it bore nine bullet wounds, in the thighs, abdomen, back, and neck. In a letter sent to the authorities on April 26, Human Rights Watch expressed concern that Medjahed may have been extrajudicially executed in custody. A reply from the semi-official National Human Rights Monitoring Body (Observatoire Nationale des Droits de l'Homme, ONDH) stated that it had learned from the authorities that Medjahed died on March 18 from wounds incurred during his arrest. The divergence between this information and that which was provided to the family points to an official attempt to cover up an extrajudicial execution. On February 21 and 22, 1995, an attempted mutiny at Serkadji Prison and its suppression by security forces resulted in the death of five prison guards and about one hundred prisoners. Despite the evidence that most of the fatalities were caused by vastly excessive force used by the security forces, authorities hastily buried the dead prisoners without autopsies, blocked all independent investigations and prosecuted no security force members for their role in the killings.6 There have been reports over the past five years, including cases documented by Amnesty International, of suspects being arrested and then being found dead, with official news agencies reporting that they had been killed in a clash. Military and security forces also reportedly carried out deadly reprisals in neighborhoods thought to be sympathetic to Islamists, or where their colleagues had been ambushed. In Blida, paratroopers went from door to door rounding up youths on March 20, 1994, a day after six security troops had been killed. The corpses of fourteen of those arrested were found the next day in the streets, Le Monde reported. Human Rights Watch's concerns: In the face of repeated massacres of civilians by armed groups, the government has failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for its poor record in protecting the civilian population. The government has not stated what precise measures it is now taking to enhance civilian protection in isolated rural areas. Enforced "Disappearances" Algeria's security forces have routinely flouted Algerian law and international law during the arrest and interrogation of security suspects. During and after its 1997 mission to Algeria, Human Rights Watch collected testimony from families and lawyers concerning persons who "disappeared" at the hands of security forces. We also spoke to four released detainees who had been held in secret detention for periods of up to three months. The report we issued earlier this year on "disappearances" forms the basis for the information presented below. Human Rights Watch collected testimonies showing that persons are often seized from their homes by forces that refuse to identify themselves or provide any reason for the arrest. Many of those detained are held for weeks or months without being brought before a judge or informed of the charges against them. Many are held in unacknowledged detention sites without being able to contact their family or lawyer, in violation of international standards and of Algeria's own Code of Criminal Procedure, which provides in Article 51 that "While protecting the confidentiality of the investigation the police officer is obligated to grant to the person held in garde à vue detention all means for enabling him to communicate immediately and directly with his family and to receive visits by it." The following case is typical of many "disappearance" cases documented by Algerian lawyers and by human rights organizations. Mourad Ouchefoune, a twenty-five-year- old economics student from Dar el-Baida in Algiers,was arrested from his home by police and military forces around midnight on March 17, 1997. According to testimony the family gave to lawyers, the security forces broke into the house, forced everyone out and checked their identities. They then handcuffed Ouchefoune and led him away, saying he was needed only for an investigation. As of June 29, 1998, the family had received no reply to their official inquiries as to his whereabouts. "Disappeared" persons come from a wide range of professions. At least two journalists who were detained have "disappeared." Djamel Fahassi, a journalist with Islamist sympathies at Algiers Radio, was seized near his home in el-Harrache on May 6, 1995. His wife, Safia, stated that neighbors said they witnessed him being taken by about four men carrying walkie-talkies whom they believed to be security forces. They drove him away in a convoy of two vehicles. She has received no official information about his whereabouts, but about two months after his arrest, a released detainee wrote a letter to a private newspaper saying he had seen Fahassi at Châteauneuf, a police academy and security center in Algiers. His wife was unable to confirm this. A report in October 1995 in a government-run newspaper, l'Horizon, that Fahassi was outside the country was later discounted by journalists at the same paper, and the family dismissed the claim. 7 Another journalist, Aziz Bouabdallah, who worked with the Arabic-language daily Al- 'Alam al-Siyassi, was taken from his home on April 12, 1997 by men dressed in police uniforms who introduced themselves as members of the security forces, according to Amnesty International and the New York-based Committee To Protect Journalists. A few months later he was believed to be held in the Châteauneuf police academy in Algiers. However, no official information about his whereabouts has been divulged. To this day, hundreds of people remain missing after their arrest months or years ago. The practice is so widespread and routine that it could only persist with the sanction of the highest level of national authority. Relatives of "disappeared" persons have told Human Rights Watch that they make the rounds of police stations, the state prosecutor's office, jails and courthouses, and file missing-person complaints with agencies such as the semi-official National Human Rights Monitoring Body (Observatoire nationale des droits de l'homme, ONDH), usually without results. In the rare instances where they obtain information about a "disappeared" family member, it is usually through informal channels such as prison guards or recently released prisoners. On September 12, 1997, Human Rights Watch submitted the information we had collected on "disappearances" to the authorities, along with questions concerning twelve cases in which we had evidence the persons had been taken by the security forces.8 We received only an indirect response, in the form of a meeting with Maître Kemal Rezag Bara, president of the ONDH. Although Me. Rezag Bara went through the cases with Human Rights Watch, no information was disclosed to us, either by Me. Rezag Bara or by any government official, confirming that any individual on our list was in official custody or specifying his whereabouts. The ONDH has acknowledged the existence of secret places of detention in Algeria. In an interview with the Arabic-language daily Al-Khabar in May, Me. Rezag Bara said he had proof of some such cases. Although he later officially repudiated that statement, previous ONDH reports refer to the existence of such centers. In its 1996 annual report, the ONDH said there should be an end to "detention centers outside the control of the law." In its 1994-95 report, the ONDH said secret detention centers existed in "places that the law has not designated for that function.They are mainly ... certain police stations or army barracks serving as detention centers. Persons arrested were freed after more than three months of secret detention in these places."9 Human Rights Watch is aware of no other official acknowledgment, to this date, of a pattern of "disappearances" or secret detentions. In a parliamentary session May 28, Interior Minister Mustafa Benmansour responded to questions from deputies by denying that "disappearances" took place in Algeria. There has been no visible effort by the Algerian authorities to compensate victims of unlawful arrest or detention, or to bring those responsible to justice. Human Rights Watch's concerns: The Algerian authorities have not taken sufficient measures to ensure that when a person is detained, the precise time and place of detention is recorded and the information is made available promptly to his or her family. The authorities have failed to provide evidence to show that security force members suspected of violating the rights of detainees under Algerian law are investigated and appropriately disciplined. Human Rights Watch is aware of no evidence that victims of wrongful detention have been compensated, in accordance with the provisions of the ICCPR's Article 9.5