Algeria 'won't tolerate torture'
2008-03-13 09:57
Algiers - Algeria will severely punish anyone using torture to pursue the country's "implacable" struggle against terrorism, said President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Wednesday.
In written replies, Bouteflika addressed longstanding allegations by human rights groups of systematic and wide-ranging security force involvement in abuses in the 1990s during a nationwide Islamist rebellion.
The question, known in Algeria as "qui tue qui" or "who kills who", is one of the most sensitive among a traumatised population seeking to recover from a conflict that cost up to 200 000 lives.
Bouteflika said people seeking to sow "confusion" were behind the charges.
Algeria plunged into near civil war
Bouteflika said: "The 'who kills who' came into play at a moment when this (counter-insurgency) struggle was not well known abroad, and when certain people wanted to shroud in confusion the responsibility - nonetheless obvious - for the wrongdoings of terrorism.
"The same goes for information about torture. Were that to manifest itself in our country as elsewhere in the world, there is no doubt it would be the target of the most severe measures on our part. We would identify the culprits who would be punished in the appropriate way."
Algeria plunged into near civil war after militants began a holy war or "jihad" after the army cancelled legislative elections in 1992 that the radical Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was set to win. The army feared an Iranian-style revolution.
A government-appointed commission said in 2005 that security force members were responsible for the abduction and disappearances of more than 6 000 civilians during the conflict.
Algeria 'still too fragile'
The report, whose full findings had not been released, said the state was responsible for failing to provide security for its citizens, but not guilty of the disappearances because officials acted on individual initiative and not under orders.
Some Algerians said Algeria was still too fragile to dig deep into its past. But independent human rights groups wanted a truth commission similar to that of post-apartheid South Africa. Some media made comparisons to Argentina's dirty war.
A reconciliation law passed in 2006 aimed at drawing a line under the conflict bars prosecutions of members of the security forces for any wrongdoing committed during the conflict.
The law also offered amnesty, and in some cases financial support, to guerrillas still fighting provided they were not responsible for massacres, rapes and bombings of public places.