Algeria: AI briefing to the Committee against Torture

Amnistía Internacional publicou a semana pasada o informe sobre Alxeria que foi enviado ó Comité contra a Tortura das Nacións Unidas.

O documento leva por título “Algeria: Briefing to the Committee Against Torture”. Copio un extracto da súa introducción:

[...] This briefing summarizes some of Amnesty International’s main concerns on Algeria, as documented in a number of the organization’s past reports. These concerns relate broadly to a persistent pattern of secret detention and torture by the Department for Information and Security (Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité, DRS), an intelligence agency which specializes in interrogating individuals who are believed to have information about terrorist activities; to the failure of the state party to provide an effective remedy to victims of human rights abuses, including torture and ill-treatment; and to continuing violence against women.

Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees suspected of terrorist activities in Algeria are being committed in the wake of more than a decade of violence, sparked by the cancellation in 1992 of the multi-party elections which the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut, FIS), an Islamist political party, was widely expected to win. During the internal conflict, safeguards for human rights protection were grievously eroded. Human rights violations in the name of counter-terrorism became entrenched as security forces ruthlessly combated armed groups who were committing grave and widespread abuses against civilians, including unlawful killings, abductions, torture and rape.. The state’s security forces and, later, state-armed militia (referred to by the authorities as “legitimate defence groups”, “self-defence groups” or “patriots”) committed massive human rights violations and abuses, including extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, secret and arbitrary detentions, and torture and other ill-treatment of thousands of real or suspected members or supporters of armed groups. The DRS, the force most associated with torture and other ill-treatment today, played a key role in the escalation of such human rights violations during the 1990s.

Notwithstanding the decrease in violence and gross human rights abuses associated with the internal conflict that has occurred in recent years, Amnesty International continues to regularly receive reports of incommunicado detention of suspects in unofficial places of detention and torture by the DRS, in the context of the government’s counter-terrorism operations. Further, while the initiative taken by the government in 2004 to enact provisions in national law to criminalize torture was welcome, it can be noted that these new provisions have failed to end the use of torture by the DRS.

The vast majority of the human rights abuses committed by both armed groups and state security forces, including torture and ill-treatment, in the context of the internal conflict have not been investigated. Impunity for past violations has been further entrenched through amnesty laws introduced by the government in 2006 with the stated intention of bringing closure to the years of violence. These laws provided for exemption from prosecution or release under an amnesty of those convicted of or detained on charges of terrorist activity, and granted comprehensive impunity to members of the security forces responsible for human rights violations.

Women have been particularly affected by violence since the onset of the internal conflict. They have been targeted for abduction, rape and other forms of sexual violence by armed groups, and have suffered disproportionately from the anguish at not knowing the truth as to the fate of thousands of men forcibly disappeared during the conflict. Further, violence against women within the family is prevalent. [...]