ICTJ in the News

March 8, 2006

Algeria releasing 2,629 Islamist prisoners this week

Christian Science Monitor

Human rights groups say the amnesty, meant to ease tensions in civil conflict, will prevent justice being done.

By Arthur Bright 

The Algerian government is releasing 2,629 Islamist prisoners this week as part of a plan to bring peace to the North African country.

Reuters reports that the process, which began Saturday with the release of 150 former rebels, are "part of a drive to promote peace and national reconciliation," according to Minister of Justice Tayeb Belaiz.

The amnesty approved by the government on February 21 also gave Islamic guerrillas fighting the authorities six months to surrender and receive a pardon provided they were not responsible for massacres, rapes and bombings of public places....

The new amnesty offers compensation for victims of the conflict and families of disappeared people as well as aid for families of rebels killed in the fighting. It also provides compensation for people who lost their jobs because they were believed to be associated with militancy.

Reuters also reports that, as part of the amnesty plan, the Algerian military would be protected from prosecution for human rights abuses.

The release program was put forward by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika last year and approved by Algerian voters in a September 2005 referendum. It is meant to relieve tensions in the country, which has been torn by civil strife for over a decade.

The conflict began in January 1992, when the president at the time, Col. Chadli Bendjedid, dissolved parliament and banned the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which looked set for a sweeping political victory. The cancellation prompted violent confrontations between the FIS and government forces and led to an ongoing conflict between Islamic rebels and the military-supported Algerian government, in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed.

The Associated Press reports that among those prisoners released Monday was the former deputy leader of the FIS, Ali Belhadj.

[Belhadj] had been barred from political or charitable activity and from making public statements when he was released in 2003 after serving a 12-year term for threatening national security. He was arrested again after he praised the Iraqi insurgency last July on the Arab television network Al-Jazeera and condoned the kidnapping in Iraq of two Algerian diplomats, who were later killed.

The amnesty program won praise from the president of the European Parliament, Josip Borrell. Xinhua reports that Borrell, speaking to the Algerian parliament on Tuesday, called the plan "an important step for the North African country to restore social order."

The amnesty program, and its accompanying protection of the Algerian military, has received sharp criticism from human rights groups, however. In a statement released by Human Rights Watch, four organizations - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Center for Transitional Justice, and the International Federation for Human Rights - warned that the plan would "consecrate impunity for crimes under international law and other human rights abuses" and "muzzle open debate by criminalizing public discussion about the nation's decade-long conflict."

[The proposed measures] will bar victims and their relatives from seeking justice in Algeria and prevent the truth about these abuses from emerging through Algerian courts. These measures, which extend to crimes against humanity and other grave abuses, contravene Algeria's obligations under international law to investigate such abuses, hold their perpetrators accountable, and provide victims judicial remedies....

The decree also provides an amnesty to members of armed groups who surrender or are in prison, as long as they did not "commit, or were accomplices in, or instigators of, acts of collective massacres, rape, or the use of explosives in public places." However, these exceptions, no matter how appropriate, do not extend to other grave crimes, suggesting that armed group members who murdered one or more persons will go free as long as the killings were not collective in nature. The amnesty would also cover other grave crimes committed by armed groups, including torture and the abduction of persons whose fate remains unknown.

The statement also pointed out that international authorities have stated that "there should be no amnesties or similar measures that afford impunity for crimes under international law and other serious human rights abuses."

The amnesty program is also causing a stir in New Zealand, where refugee Ahmed Zaoui, a member of the FIS convicted of terrorism-related charges in Belgium and France, has been since 2002. The National Business Review of New Zealand reports that the populist, anti-immigration New Zealand First party argued that Mr. Zaoui had no reason to stay in the country now that Algeria had offered amnesty.

NZ First deputy leader Peter Brown said the amnesty would make it safe for Mr Zaoui to return to Algeria and that any grounds for claiming refugee status were very shaky.

"I'm even prepared to drive him to the airport," Mr Brown said.

Zaoui has been fighting legal battles and was briefly imprisoned in New Zealand, after the government declared him a security risk due to his alleged ties to the GIA, a militant offshoot of the FIS.