RIGHTS-ALGERIA: UN Panel Condemns Algerian Terrorism

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 16 1998 (IPS) - A U.N. panel led by former Portuguese President Mario Soares Wednesday condemned terrorists in Algeria for killings and other crimes, but itself was criticised for failing to investigate the violation of human rights.

“There is no excuse for terrorism,” the six-member panel concluded in its report, released here Wednesday. “Algeria deserves the support of the international community in its efforts to combat this phenomenon … We are satisfied that Algerian society is capable of expressing political views and discussing them within the framework of legality.”

The team, which visited Algeria from Jul. 22 to Aug. 4, conceded that the Algerian government restricted its ability to conduct investigations or interview some people, including the leaders of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).

“There were some people we would have wished to meet, or places we would have wished to visit but could not, because of the position of the Algerian authorities,” the report noted. “We had neither the means nor the mandate to conduct investigations of our own.”

Because of this, some groups – notably Amnesty International which earlier this year published a report accusing the Algerian government of at least some of the responsibility for atrocities – dismissed the Soares panel report as irrelevant.

“From a human rights perspective, the visit of the U.N. panel was a whitewash and is no substitute for an independent investigation into the human rights crisis in the country, which is long overdue,” Amnesty said in a statement.

The United Nations, however, defended the panel as “one of the most high-powered ever established…” Along with Soares other members were: former Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, former Jordanian Prime Minister Abdel Karim Kabariti, former U.S. Ambassador at ther UN Donald McHenry, former French State Minister Simone Veil and Kenyan Attorney-General Amos Wako.

“The panel was the first international body to visit a prison and massacre sites in Algeria,” the U.N. statement added. “In one instance, the panel visited a massacre site within days and spoke to the victims.”

For all that, however, the panel’s report largely consists of interviews with Algerian authorities and critics of the Islamists, with whom the government has battled since the 1992 cancellation of elections which the FIS had led in an earlier round of voting. Since that time, the panel contended, terrorist groups had initiated a campaign of attacks which is currently “aimed at the entire population”.

“Although terrorism has its roots in Algeria, it also had connections in other countries; however, Algerian terrorism was unique in that it was not pursuing a specific objective,” the report argued.

The report accepted Algerian authorities’ contention that the Islamist terrorists were behind the country’s many massacres, which army officials said they could not prevent because of the difficult topography around massacre sites. The report noted the government’s claims that only some 3,600 terrorists, “mainly identified with banditry”, remain active, although it added that “some were sceptical as to whether the terrorists had actually been defeated”.

Although conceding that discussions with the government on interviewing FIS leaders had been “tense”, sources familiar with the panel’s work defended the focus on people critical of terrorism as an honest account of Algerian society’s priorities.

One Algerian woman, who reportedly did not belong to any party, told the panel, “The acts committed by the terrorist Islamic groups are crimes against humanity. In Algeria, the power in place is not quite democratic and we fight and struggle against it for more democracy. But that does not mean we want the Afghan veil.”

Still, the government did not escape blame from some responsibility for rights violations in the report, which noted allegations of torture and of disappearances of people, including many last seen in police custody.

The U.N. panel estimated that the range of missing persons in Algeria could vary from 2,000 to some 20,000. Algeria’s National Human Rights Observatory received 988 cases of missing persons in 1996, including 337 in which people had been arrested in their homes.

“The authorities’ response when faced with allegations of disappearances was that the people concerned could have either gone abroad or have joined the terrorists operating in the mountains,” the report said. “However, families of missing persons with whom the panel met provided information of arrests of relatives, some of whom has been seen in different places of detention.”

The panel also drew attention to the government’s creation of armed paramilitary “civil defense groups”, noting that “some of those with whom we spoke told us that the government needed to improve the ways in which it responded to terrorism and in which it dealt with the charges that exceses are committed by security forces”.

After much prodding, the Soares panel received a list from the government of some 140 cases in which it had to act on atrocity allegations against members of the defense groups. It also noted allegations that some defense group members were “paid clandestinely by the authorities”.

Amnesty International – which also blamed the authorities and defense groups for atrocities – nevertheless criticised the Soares panel for failing to investigate the country’s overall rights record. It especially pointed to the failure of the panel to interview more than one detainee accused of terrorism in its visit to Serkadji Prison, even though some 20,000 people are detained on charges of terrorism nationwide.

The panel, even by its own admission, had to face several hurdles before it could go about its work. The Algerian government previously blocked UN human rights investigations into the country, and insisted on a restricted mandate before allowing the Soares panel to arrive.

The United Nations itself has been tight-lipped about the work of the panel, with one official saying that it was not up to the world body to interpret its report.

“We did the best we could,” one official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of the report.