Failure to protect

By Dr Michael Peel - Published May 1999

The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in London has been monitoring for several years the reports of torture from its Algerian clients.

View this report in French (rtf download)

This paper summarises the experiences described by 70 asylum seekers in the UK on whom medical reports were written between April 1994 and March 1999. These medical reports were written by 11 different Medical Foundation doctors. A report is only written if, in the expert opinion of the doctor, the patient had physical and / or psychological signs that were completely consistent with the history of torture. Of these, two had been attacked by the GIA (Groupe Islamique Arm - Armed Islamic Group) and were claiming asylum because the Algerian authorities had been unwilling and unable to protect them, two had been attacked by the GIA and tortured by the Algerian authorities as well, and the others had been tortured only by the authorities. Several of them also gave a history of harassment by the GIA.

The majority of the group were aged between 25 and 35, although five were aged over 45 when they were first seen at the Medical Foundation. 80% (44) were single. Of those for whom the information was recorded, 47% (26) had been to university. Half described themselves as members or supporters of the FIS (Front Islamique du Salut - Islamic Salvation Front). 60% (41) said they had been detained once, 25% (17) had been detained twice, the others had been detained more times, including three who said they had been detained more than ten times. 41% (61) of the detentions were for three days or less, and only 3% (4) were for more than a year. None of the patients described being detained for more than two years on any one occasion.

All described being punched, slapped, and hit with objects, particularly truncheons. Other methods of torture described included electric shocks (by 19 = 28%), burning (by 11 = 16%), and "chiffon" (by 28 = 41%). This is a torture in which a wedge is put into the mouth allowing the torturers to pour contaminated water into the victim's stomach until he or she vomits, while at the same time making it almost impossible to breathe. Thirty-two (47%) described sexual abuse including rape.

Forty-one (59%) described suffering from various symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Twenty-nine (41%) were assessed by the doctor to be psychologically disturbed enough to be referred for counselling within the Medical Foundation, including seven who have received inpatient psychiatric treatment in the UK. The psychological effects of being detained and tortured were clearly devastating for many of those seen.

What is also striking is that the history given by those detained in 1998 is no different from that described as having happened previously. People are still being arrested and held in incommunicado detention. It is too early to tell whether there are fewer people being tortured in Algeria, but what is clear is that the methods of torture have not changed since the Algerian War of Independence in the 1950s. The authorities are unable and unwilling to offer protection from terrorists and armed militias. They are not prepared to permit independent human rights investigations by professional monitors from the UN or internationally recognised human rights NGOs. Algeria is therefore not a place to which asylum seekers can safely be returned.

Introduction
"Persecution is normally related to action by the authorities of a country. It may also emanate from sections of the population that do not respect the standards established by the laws of the country concerned. A case in point may be religious intolerance, amounting to persecution, in a country otherwise secular, but where sizeable fractions of the population do not respect the religious beliefs of their neighbours. Where serious discriminatory or other offensive acts are committed by the local populace, they can be considered as persecution if they are knowingly tolerated by the authorities, or if the authorities refuse, or prove unable, to offer effective protection."

Mr A was a professional sportsman who was out training on his bicycle when a car overtook him and slowed down to have a good look at him. The car drove away, turned back at a roundabout and drove directly at him. He was knocked off his bicycle and broke his legs. The assailants dragged him into their car and questioned him about why he did not behave in a more Islamic manner. The told him that they were from the GIA. They said that he would not be warned again, and kicked his broken leg. He lost consciousness; when he came round he was in a hospital. He had a large incision wound where his throat had been cut. He had been found dumped by the side of the road in an isolated place. He felt that he was very lucky to have survived this but, because of his leg injury, he could not continue his professional career. He said: "The security forces had taken a report from me. I asked them what protection I could get but they said all Algerians need protection including themselves." He therefore left the country.

Masked men carrying guns broke into the home of Ms B one night. They said that they were from the GIA, and wanted her to give them some information from the records of the company where she worked. On a previous occasion she had reported some harassment from the GIA to the police, who had ignored her complaint and had molested her and the female friend she had gone with. She did not see the point of telling the police this time. A few weeks later she saw some men coming towards her in the street. The next thing that she remembers is coming round in hospital. She had been stabbed with a knife that had perforated her bowel in three places.

Mr C was a civil servant who was promoted to a high profile position in his Ministry. He received a letter from the GIA saying that if he took the job, he would be killed. He knew that two of his colleagues in that role had already been killed in the street. He spoke to his boss, who said that it was their duty to fight the GIA, and would not take him off the project. He then spoke to the police, who said that they did not have the resources to protect him. He went off sick with the stress of the situation, only to be arrested, detained and given electric shocks and made to undergo "chiffon" (see later). After seven months of this he was taken to court accused of collaborating with terrorists. He was sentenced to six months in prison, and released because he had already spent seven months in detention. He then left the country.

Mr D was a businessman who had been arrested by the authorities several times. A few months after one release he was kidnapped by the GIA and forced to work with them for three months. He was made to send threatening letters to other businessmen and to keep accounts of the money they sent in. He often read in the papers of people being killed that he had written to and who had not responded. A few times they made him accompany them on missions to keep records of what had happened, and in one of these he was able to escape from them.

Mr E was arrested by the Algerian authorities and detained in a camp in the desert for more than five months. A few days after his release, three masked man carrying guns burst into his home in the early hours of the morning. He assumed that they were from the GIA. They questioned him about what happened in the camp, and said that he must have co-operated with the authorities in order to be released so soon. He was told that he was being watched and would be killed if he had any further contact with the authorities. He remained in hiding for the next two and a half years, during which time both the police and Islamic militants called frequently at his family home looking for him. He finally thought it was safe to visit his family home, but within hours of arriving there, three masked men burst into the house and stabbed him in the stomach with a bayonet.

Mr F was at home in a village when the GIA raided it, stole vehicles and weapons, and laid mines. A few days later the army came and arrested all the young men. He says: "I was asked why I did not join the militia and I told them that I was scared about my life. They then told me that they were sacrificing themselves for us, and because of their anger, they started beating me up and torturing me, even though they knew I had nothing to do with this."

Historical background
Algeria was colonised by the French in 1840, and from 1873 France decided to expropriate the land for French settlers who wished to live in the colonies - the pieds-noirs. By 1950 there were over a million of these settlers, monopolising the fertile land. Nationalist resistance grew stronger from the 1920s, and participated in the elections. In 1954 the FLN (Front de Liberation Nationale - National Liberation Front) was founded by those who believed that elections under colonial control were futile, and started an armed rebellion. In order to protect their interests and those of the pieds-noirs, the French authorities deployed more than 500,000 troops and destroyed 8,000 villages. More than a million people died before Algeria became independent in July 1962.

During this eight-year period, the issue of disappearances, torture, and other human rights abuses was brought gradually to the awareness of the French people.

"The news of torture from Algeria, brought first to France by those returning from military service - particularly, as Sartre notes, by returning priests, and later by scholars and political officers . . . - was widely circulated in several key books, most strikingly in Henri Alleg's La Question, with an anguished essay by Sartre in 1958."

In 1955 a civil servant was commissioned to write a report on the use of torture in Algeria, which ended up expressing more sympathy for the perpetrators than the victims. In La Vrai Battaille d'Algiers (1971), General Massu, who in 1957 was the French commander during the Battle of Algiers, answered past criticism by saying:

"I have no fear of the word [torture]. But I think that in the majority of cases, the French military obligated to use it and conquer the terrorism were, and happily! 'choir boys' in relation to the use that the fellagas [Arabs] made of it."

At one point, Massu explained that with the necessity to obtain from terrorists "urgent operational information on which the lives of innocent beings depended, it was a consequent necessity to 'knock them about a bit . . . to make them spit it out'."

In response, Sartre writes that many of those tortured by the French were not terrorists, and the army knew that they were not terrorists. In addition:

"The majority [of those] tortured say nothing because they have nothing to say unless, to avoid torture, they agree to bear false witness or confess to a crime that they have not committed. As for those who do have something to say, we know very well that they do not talk."

The torture itself was best described by Henri Alleg himself, a French journalist in Algeria whose paper was banned in 1955. He went into hiding, but was arrested by French Paratroops in June 1957 and detained incommunicado for a month, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. He smuggled his account out of the internment camp in which he was subsequently held. He gives a graphic account of his torture, including being given electric shock treatment many times. In this extract he describes the experience of being subjected to "chiffon":

"Lo_ fixed a rubber tube to the metal tap which shone just above my face. He wrapped my head in a rag, while De_ said to him: 'put a wedge in his mouth'. With the rag already over my face, Lo_ held my nose. . . And he turned on the tap. The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. . . But I couldn't hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. . . In the gloom I saw . . . the captain who . . . was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw up the water I had swallowed."

After independence in 1962, more than 600,000 French nationals returned to France, taking their wealth with them, to be replaced by 500,000 poor Algerians who had been living in France. There was widespread nationalisation, but the government had little administrative experience. A coup in 1965 centralised state power and control even further. There was steady economic expansion based on the export of oil and natural gas from the south of the country, which has represented 96% of foreign earnings. However, the FLN retained control over all aspects of the country.

In October 1988, a wave of protests broke out due the declining economic situation caused by falling production in industry and agriculture, and rising foreign debt. There was lack of water and basic consumer goods in the towns and cities. Among the main groups participating in the protests were Muslim fundamentalists, and some mosques became the site of political demonstrations. In mid-1989 the president presented a new constitution which allowed a modified multiparty system for the first time. The FIS was based in the Islamic infrastructure of the mosques and other religious organisations. It advocated social justice, and set up local welfare schemes. It quickly became the best supported opposition movement. In the municipal elections in June 1990, the FIS defeated the FLN. This led to an increase in protests by the FIS, particularly that the legislative and presidential elections should be brought forward.

In June 1991, the Prime Minister resigned and a State of Siege was declared throughout Algeria. The elections were rescheduled for later that year, and the FIS suspended its campaign of agitation. In the December 1991 elections, only 60% of the electorate voted, and the FIS won the first round with just over 40% of the votes cast. The FFS (Front des Forces Socialistes - Socialist Forces Front), a secular party dominated by Berbers, came second in front of the FLN. Anti-fundamentalists called a massive demonstration, led by Trade Unionists and the FFS, and supported by intellectuals, professionals and women. The President resigned and was replaced by a State Security Panel that was dominated by the military. The next stage of the elections was suspended, and all FIS leaders who had not gone into hiding were subsequently arrested.

In February 1992, a state of emergency was declared, and the following month the FIS was dissolved. The government dissolved all the city and town councils that had been won by the FIS in June 1990. The violence of both factions, government and Muslim fundamentalists, kept rising, and in September the government decreed a number of "anti-terrorist" measures, including the extension of the death penalty.

In November 1994 attempts by Western governments to help reach an agreement failed. In January 1995, the follow-up conference in Rome involving the FLN, FFS, and the FIS and other moderate Muslim groups came to an agreement, which, however, the military-dominated government did not accept: proposals to end the violence, release political prisoners, and form a government of national unity. By this stage, observers estimated that there the death toll was more than 40,000 people, including 80 foreigners. Summary executions and "disappearances" were being committed by both sides, and the government refused to allow investigations by human rights organisations into allegations of torture. There were a number of large detention camps in the Sahara Desert, although the government announced that they closed the last of these in 1995.

In 1996 the GIA split into rival factions. The largest kept the name and is the best organised, and it includes many veterans of the war in Afghanistan. The other main group is the AIS (Armée Islamique du Salut - Islamic Salvation Army (AIS), which sees itself as the armed wing of the FIS, and has declared a unilateral cease-fire. The fragmentation of the GIA has complicated the work of the anti-terrorist forces, and makes it harder to be sure exactly which group has committed any individual atrocity. The more extreme groups have announced a fatwa against those they considered to be enemies of Islam and those consorting with them, stating that divine law allowed them to expropriate their belongings and abduct their women.

Since 1992 the authorities have regularly referred to 2,000 to 3,000 terrorists in arms. But the only reliable figures come from the Ministry of Justice. In 1995, 18,000 prisoners, i.e. half the prison population, were serving sentences for crimes related to terrorism.

Current human rights situation
Algeria's human rights emergency provoked more international concern and diplomatic activity during 1998 than at any time since the violence became endemic in 1992. Domestic and international outrage was directed at government abuses, at the GIA, and at the security forces' failure to protect civilians.

"The security forces committed extrajuducial executions, were responsible for numerous disappearances, routinely tortured or otherwise abused detainees, and arbitrarily arrested and detained or held incommunicado many individuals suspected of involvement with armed Islamist groups."

"In other incidents, terrorists specifically targeted their victims as instruments of the State or as individuals whose lifestyles they considered in conflict with Islamic values."

It has been estimated that as many as 7,000 civilians, terrorists and security forces died in 1998, and that as many as 77,000 have died in the seven years of civil war. There were numerous massacres in the year widely attributed to the GIA. However, there were many suggestions of pro-government militias being involved in some atrocities attributed to Islamic groups. Two mayors were arrested on charges of murdering, kidnapping and extortion while leading militias. One was said to have been stopped at a police roadblock and a kidnap victim found in the boot of his car. However, both were released in April 1998 and no further action has been taken.

"On the night of 22-23 September 1997, more than 200 people, including many children, were massacred in the village of Bentalha, a few kilometres south of Algiers. Bentalha is near five different army and security forces outposts. Two main army barracks are just a few kilometres away and several security posts are only a few hundred metres away. Survivors said that at the time of the massacre armed forces units with armoured vehicles were stationed outside the village - just a few hundred metres from the place where the massacre was taking place. They did not intervene to stop the killings or arrest the perpetrators, who were abl