Algerian amnesty may end war
2006-02-22 09:05
Algiers - Algeria announced long-awaited details on Tuesday of an amnesty aimed at ending more than a decade of civil war, extending a deadline for Islamic guerrillas to surrender and shielding the military from prosecution.
A government executive decree carried by the state agency, APS, gave Islamic guerrillas still fighting the authorities six months to surrender and be pardoned if they were not responsible for massacres, rapes and bombings of public places.
The government also stressed that the military would be protected from prosecution for alleged human rights abuses.
The decree said: "Any denunciation or complaint against the armed forces and all other security forces is inadmissible."
Parliamentary election
Algeria plunged into conflict in early 1992 after the then military-backed authorities scrapped a parliamentary election radical Islamists were poised to win.
The violence claimed about 150 000 lives and more than $20bn in economic losses due to a sabotage campaign by Islamic rebels.
Thousands of Islamic guerrillas had already given themselves up since early January 2000 after a partial amnesty.
The new amnesty decree would also permit the release of thousands of Islamic prisoners who were not convicted for mass killings, rapes or bomb attacks on public places.
Financial aid
It offered compensation for victims of the conflict, including families of disappeared people as well as some financial aid for families of rebels killed in the fighting.
Human rights groups and families said that the government security forces abducted many of the disappeared people.
Government officials said that many of the disappeared had joined the guerrillas.
Algerians voted in favour of an amnesty in a referendum last September, but there were no details of how people would qualify.
Tuesday's decree was endorsed at a meeting led by Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia focusing on measures to implement the so-called Peace and National Reconciliation Charter, the main plank of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's policy.