UK trains Algerian Army torturers
Britain signs defense agreement with Algeria
Abdelmaleck Guenaizia, Algerian minister of defence and British Defence Minister, Bob Ainsworth, who was on a visit to Algiers this week signed an agreement which aims to legalise the clandestine co-operation which has been going on between the two countries to co-operate on defence which in reality means co-operating on kidnapping and torture in the name of counter terrorism.
Under the new defense agreement more Algerian military officers will be trained in Britain, the British Embassy said, the outline accord also paves the way for more joint military exercises between the two countries.
Commenting on the new military deal, British embassy spokeswoman said “the outline agreement aims to regularise cooperation between the two countries in defence matters, particularly the training of Algerian officers in Great Britain.”
“It also allows cooperation in other respects, such as joint military exercises and annual meetings between the two countries,” the spokeswoman added.
The embassy refused to comment on Algerian media reports that Britain had a long-term goal of selling military hardware to the North African country.
After a meeting with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Bob Ainsworth told reporters that “Britain is working to strengthen cooperation with Algeria in several areas, particularly in political relations, energy and the fight against terrorism,”
The Government of Algeria although nominally a democracy under ‘President for life’, Bouteflika remains under the control of a ruthless military junta which seized control, after cancelling elections in the early 1990’s and launched a clandestine war of terror.
In 1989, the Algerian government which had had been controlled by a single party, the National Liberation Front (FLN), since independence agreed to allow political reform and elections.
In June 1990, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won by large margins in local elections. In legislative elections in December 1991, the FIS won again and they seem poised to win a further election one month later that would have put them in power, but on January 11, 1992, the army staged a coup, overthrowing President Chadli Benjedid and cancelling the elections, within months, the FIS was banned, its local officials elected in 1990 were removed from office, and tens of thousands of suspected sympathizers imprisoned and often tortured.
In 2005 Mohammed Samraoui, the Algerian army’s deputy chief counterintelligence specialist, who deserted and fled Algeria in disgust, explained to a French Court of law that the Algerian army helped create the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA), which was supposedly an Islamist militant group linked to al-Qaeda fighting the Algerian government.
Samraoui said that in the months before an Algerian army coup in January 1992 the Algerian army “created the GIA” in an attempt to weaken and destroy the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), an Islamist political party poised to take power in elections.
He said, “We established a list of the most dangerous people and demanded their arrest, but in vain: they were needed [to be free] to create terrorist groups. Instead, we arrested right, left, and center. We were trying to radicalize the movement.”
The GIA, which was allegedly an Islamist militant group linked to al-Qaeda, was in reality manipulated by the Algerian government from its inception.
The GIA Militants launched their first attack in December 1991, shortly before the Algerian army coup, striking a military base, killing conscripts there and seizing weapons.
After the army coup, the GIA staged many attacks, targeting government employees, intellectuals, and foreigners for assassination, attacking factories, railroads, bridges, banks, military garrisons, and later targetting civilians.
Over the following decade over a 100,000 civilians were believed to have died, it was a period of unspeakable atrocities and insecurity wher the massacres of civilians particularly in outlying rural areas became an everyday occurence routine – although theviolence was offically blamed on the shadowy GIA in reality powerful factions within the secretive ruling military elite have been accused of orchestrating kidnappings, assassinations and even massacres to manipulate the GIA and reinforce the army’s own grip on power.
Thousands disappeared without trace, in 2003 Amnesty International accused the Algerian security forces yesterday of widespread torture and demanded information on the fate of the missing people. Amnesty also said that torture by the army and the security forces was systematic and widespread.
New York based Human Rights Watch has also stated that the Algerian leadership was guilty of gross human rights violations. Algeria had “utterly failed” to investigate the thousands of civilians made to “disappear” by the state security forces between 1992 and 1998, who remain unaccounted for. “None of the missing has returned and no one has been held accountable for their disappearance,”
Although the Algerian Government signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons against Enforced Disappearance on in 2007, it has not yet agreed to ratify the convention.
The Algerian State has responded to demands for truth and justice so far by declaring a general amnesty for the security forces without any investigations, while granting limited financial compensation to some families of the disappeared.
Between 1992 and 1998 between 7,000 and 20,000 people were victims of enforced disappearances after their arrest or abduction by state agents. All police and military elements, as well as militias, took part in a brutal repression in the name of the “struggle against terrorism.” Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested, held in secret, tortured, or summarily executed. The fate of many of them remains unknown.
Although the Algerian State has been forced to officially recognize the phenomenon of enforced disappearances it has yet to agree to any accountability for these crimes.
Farouk Ksentini the President of Algeria’s, nominally independent, human rights organisation, the National Consultative Commission for the protection and promotion of Human Rights (CNCPPDH), declared that “the State was responsible for this crime, but not guilty.”
The status of the CNCPPDH as the national institution for human rights in Algeria, has recently been demoted by the International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions (ICC) due to their lack of independence from the Algerian Government.
Other issues for which the Algerian Government has been criticised by the UN Human Rights Committee in addition to that of the enforced disappearances include the existence of secret prisons and the lack of accountability by the civil asdministration and the widespread use of torture by the DRS, secret military intelligence service.
The Amnest International report Unrestrained powers: Torture by Algeria’s Military Security
documents in detail mnesty International’s findings concerning persistent torture and other ill-treatment by the DRS.
Not only is Britain now prepared to arm and train these Algerian State kidnappers and torturers but the British Government detaining the former victims of these butchers and now the British Government is now regularly sending Algerians who fled their country to escape state persecution back to be tortured and killed in the name of co-operation with the war on terror.
Human Rights Watch has called on The British government to stop deporting foreign terrorism suspects to countries such as Algeria which have a widely acknowledged history of the widespread use of torture by state security services based on unreliable promises not to torture them
The 36-page report, titled “Not the Way Forward: The UK’s Dangerous Reliance on Diplomatic Assurances,” focuses on the reliability of no-torture promises from the governments like Algeria