Poem for event marking 500 days imprisonment in New Zealand:

In a dream

I saw myself in a secluded village. Walking.
While walking and enjoying the beauty, an old man with a face of wood called me.
       Hey you stranger! Let me read your palm.

Greedily,
I believed him and I wanted to shake his hand.
He took my palm while his was shaking, returned it and immediately said:
           You stranger, you are accused.

He took his glasses, looked closely and said
You will die but not among us
He looked again and angrily said
   Don’t worry,
we will provide you a shroud and a coffin

Suddenly!
Birds appeared and told the old man

Leave him alone! He is of the people.

The old man replied
This is another accusation. He is a liar.

I woke up with the song:The awaited will return
The awaited will return
I asked myself, “will the awaited return”?
My love heard my whisper, The birds will surely come back, you will see your beloved again and
dates will be collected. The sun will rise and rain will fall.

“how long will I wait?”

I hid amongst my tears, my body shaking.
When will the awaited return?
How long will I wait?

-Ahmed Zaoui  (2004)

Words From Ahmed Zaoui www.freezaoui.org.nz 

FACT SHEET – AHMED ZAOUI

Ahmed Zaoui is a democratically-elected member of parliament of Algeria. In 1991, as the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) candidate for Cheraga, he was elected to parliament during the first multi-partly parliamentary elections ever held in Algeria. He was unable to take up his new position however, as in January 1992 the Algerian military regime launched a coup de tat, re-installed the former government and declared the FIS an ‘illegal’ party.

Since then, Mr Zaoui has been trying to find a safe and free country to live in, to enable his wife and children to live in safety and to continue his tireless efforts to restore peace and democracy in Algeria.

Mr Zaoui is an intellectual and a peaceful political activist, striving for the right of his people to self-determination and basic freedom. A moderate who favours dialogue and condemns violence, he was instrumental in organising and drafting – together with the Catholic Sant’ Egidio Community in Italy – a format for the Rome Colloqium. The Colloqium sought to bring together all of the Algerian political parties and concerned countries and led to the drafting of the 1995 Rome Platform, which until today remains the only political document for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Algeria.

CHRONOLOGY OF FACTS

Algeria

· Mr Ahmed Zaoui is a religious scholar and until 1992 he was an Associate Professor of Theology and Comparative Religious Studies at the University of Algiers.

· In 1989 Mr Zaoui joined the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), a peaceful, non-violent Islamic political movement that became the unanimous voice of the majority of the Algerian people against the excesses and corruption of one-party rule, which had prevailed in Algeria for some decades. During the first round of the 1991 elections in Algeria, the only free parliamentary elections to ever be held there, Mr Zaoui stood as the FIS candidate for Cheraga. He won his seat and on a national level the FIS captured the majority of seats in a landslide victory.

· Within weeks however, the election results were rejected by the military regime which swiftly moved to ban the FIS and arrest and imprison its founding leaders, Dr Abbassi Madani and Mr Ali Belhadj. In the months that followed, thousands of FIS members and supporters were murdered or disappeared. The crackdown on the FIS led to a bloody civil war that continues today and that has claimed the lives of over 200,000 victims, mainly civilians.

· After the coup, Mr Zaoui fled Algeria with many thousands of intellectuals, doctors, university Professors and religious Imams. He reached Europe.

Belgium and France

· In late 1993, Mr Zaoui reached Belgium where he sought refugee status and was initially permitted to remain.

· While in Belgium in 1994, Mr Zaoui was the first FIS leader to be approached by the Christian St Egidio Community in Rome to help organise and participate in the “Rome Colloqium”, Algerian multi-party negotiations held in Rome, Italy in 1994 and 1995. He was instrumental in organising and drafting a format for an international Colloqium in Rome that resulted in the Rome “Platform for a Political and Peaceful Solution to the Algerian Crisis”, signed in Rome on 13 January 1995 by the main Algerian political parties (both secular and Islamic). Both the Algerian and French Governments refused to attend the Colloqium.

· While in Europe Mr Zaoui also wrote many articles and issued numerous communiques, favouring a peaceful political solution to the Algerian crisis and condemning the violence that was unfolding there.

· In Europe in the mid-nineties, the FIS leadership in exile became fragmented and divided. These internal divisions were widely reported in the press, alongside reports about armed Algerian extremist groups operating within Europe. In the “media toxification” that followed, Mr Zaoui was wrongly labelled as being a member of the GIA (Islamic Armed Group), a violent extremist organisation. Mr Zaoui categorically rejects such an accusation. Indeed, the views and workings of the GIA are entirely anathema to the principles of the FIS, and the GIA have actually issued a death sentence against Mr Zaoui and other FIS leaders.

· In March 1994, following terrorist bombings in France and during a visit to Belgium by the Algerian Foreign Minister, Mr Zaoui was suddenly arrested and charged under antiquated Belgian laws with being the “head of a criminal association”. While the media claimed that the “association” was allegedly the GIA, a report from the Belgian BSR (Special Investigative Brigade) found that there was no conclusive evidence linking Mr Zaoui to this group. He was acquitted by the lower court in Brussels but the acquittal was later overturned by the Belgium Court of Appeal. Interestingly, he was given a four-year suspended sentence for being the “head” of the alleged association, while a co-defendant convicted of being a “member” of the group was sentenced to four years imprisonment. Later, in 1996, Mr Zaoui was vindicated in a decision of the Belgian Aliens Consultative Committee, which affirmed his membership of the FIS and acknowledged that there was nothing to suggest he belonged to the GIA.

· Later, in September 2001, Mr Zaoui was also to be convicted in absentia by a French Court on similar charges and was given a light suspended sentence. France’s anti-terrorism laws, pre-trial detention provisions and judicial procedures have been lambasted by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in a fifty page report released in 1999 entitled, “France: Paving the Way for Arbitrary Justice”.

· There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that neither France nor Belgium seriously believe that Mr Zaoui was guilty of the crimes for which he has been convicted. There is also a large body of evidence to suggest that the convictions against Mr Zaoui were politically-motivated due to the exceptionally-close political, diplomatic and economic relationship between the Algerian, French and Belgian Governments. Significantly, no international police warrant in respect of Mr Zaoui has ever emanated from France or Belgium. A number of international arrest warrants against Mr Zaoui have however emanated from Algeria, where he has received in absentia a number of death sentences and several sentences of life-imprisonment.

· In November 2002, a French television channel released a documentary uncovering the Algerian Government’s infiltration and manipulation of the GIA, the very terrorist group blamed for massacres in Algeria and attacks in Europe, and the very group which Mr Zaoui was alleged to have joined. The regime’s motive for seizing control of the GIA was to generate confusion amongst the Algerian population and the European community as to the motives of Algeria’s banned Islamic parties, thereby maligning the FIS and galvanising international opinion into support for the regime. In a shocking revelation, the documentary also exposed the French Intelligence Service’s dealings with Algerian intelligence officials and its actual complicity in alleged GIA attacks on France.

Switzerland – Burkina Faso

· In 1997, Mr Zaoui and his family moved to Switzerland where they claimed asylum. The manner in which the Swiss authorities dealt with them is further proof that the accusations levelled against Mr Zaoui are baseless and politically-motivated. Rather than allow its legal system to process him, the Swiss Government secretly kidnapped Mr Zaoui and his family from their home in the middle of the night, put them on a helicopter to the airport and then flew them to Burkina Faso, one of the most underdeveloped nations in Africa. Media reports indicated that the Burkina Faso authorities had agreed to accept the Zaoui family in exchange for development aid.

· While in Burkina Faso, Mr Zaoui was secretly contacted by telephone on three separate occasions by the Algerian President Bouteflika.

· In Burkina Faso Mr Zaoui was banned from being reported in the visual media and was unable to make political announcements or declarations. Unable to tolerate such restrictions, and growing increasingly fearful for his physical safety there, he left Burkina Faso and travelled to Malaysia, where he spent some time before travelling on to New Zealand.

Check out a recent NZ Herald article on this here
Amnesty have an Zaoui website here

118 Constable Street

Newtown
Wellington

Thursday, 7 August 2003

Dear Prime Minister,

I am a resident of Newtown Wellington, and I work as a researcher and educator for the Anglican Social Justice Commission. Before this I completed a Masters degree at Victoria University of Wellington. I have a strong interest in politics, international and local, and have a broad awareness of the political developments in Algeria over the last two decades. I am writing out of concern for the current situation involving Ahmed Zaoui, and the security risk certificate that has been issued against him here in New Zealand.

I am particularly concerned with your recent comments that the decision reached by Refugee Status Appeal Authority were limited as they lacked access to confidential SIS information, and moreover that this decision might be superseded on this basis. If there is indeed information of the nature that it “cannot and should not be made public”, then the authenticity of this information must be carefully weighed against the extensive and verifiable public information available on Mr Zaoui, his allegiances, and his activities over the last decade.

I have read the many of the reports and affidavits that were submitted in support of Mr Zaoui’s appeal to the Refugee Status Appeal Authority, and, on the basis of these, am not at all surprised at the Authority’s decision. Mr Zaoui’s case was extremely strong, and many prominent experts on Algeria hi-lighted and outlined aspects of Algeria’s complex political situation. As I am sure you are aware, such reports indicate that it is likely that Mr Zaoui’s has been tagged a terrorist by the Algerian regime (and consequently countries with close economic and political links to Algeria) as part of a wider move to quell even the most moderate political dissent. I urge you to remain fully aware of the Algerian Government’s manipulation of the war of terrorism for its own ends, and must not simply accept information originating from here (even if now untraceable to these origins) as authentic.

The authenticity of such confidential SIS evidence must also be weighed against Mr Zaoui’s many public activities promoting non-violent political solutions for Algeria. His work alongside the Sant’ Egidio community in setting up the dialogue processes in Rome in 1996, and thereby bringing together Algeria’s major political opposition groups, not only sits in contrast the activities of terrorists, but actually works directly against them. Terrorism lives and thrives in situations of instability, and gains its recruits and adherents from those with real or imagined grievances (of course acknowledging this in no way condones the terrorist resort to violence). Terrorism is far less likely to thrive in an environment where there are forums for addressing and resolving grievance. Such colloquiums as that inaugurated and supported by Mr Zaoui actively reduces international terrorism by providing a viable alternative for the expression of political opposition. The work of Mr Zaoui in promoting peace and discussion are of such a level and extent that they can not be merely disregarded as a front or cover, beneath which terrorists activities and agendas operate. Such activities in and of themselves are a strong refutation of any accusation of terrorist activities or connections. For this reason any supposedly terrorist activities of associations are extremely unlikely.

When Mr Zaoui first arrived in New Zealand I understand that he immediately stated who he was and petitioned for amnesty. These are not the actions of a terrorist, but rather seem the actions of someone confident enough of his own innocence that he is willing to throw himself at the mercy of the New Zealand’s democratic and legal systems. The normal procedure has granted Mr Zaoui refugee status, and thus found him innocent of any terrorist activities or associations. While legal mechanisms are in place, and have been invoked, for superseding this decision, I urge you to think carefully before pursuing them.

Central to the moral foundation that legitimises the legal system, both in New Zealand and international law, is the belief that one is innocent until proven guilty. If Mr Zaoui is extradited without trial (or actually in spite of winning his trial), then I urge you to allow him some opportunity to respond to the evidence that is being brought against him. I urge you to make the nature of the evidence being brought against Mr Zaoui, if not the detail, available to himself and to his legal counsel. Even if there are indeed legitimate reasons why this evidence must be kept from the public, there must be a process of some kind that allows it to verified and responded too. It must be available to at least some mechanisms independent of the SIS and international intelligence networks. I mean this as no slur against the SIS, and I would presume that they have thorough authentication processes in place, but such must also be weighed the quality and authenticity of the processes and submissions of the Refugee Status Appeal Board. The information that has been used to establish Mr Zaoui’s eligibility for refugee status can be publicly tested and is verifiable by any individual or organisation. The confidential SIS information on which Mr Zaoui’s fate now resides cannot. As democracies are by their very nature founded and maintained on the openness of bureaucratic processes and decisions (and insofar as they seek to allow citizens access to such they become totalitarian) I urge you to think carefully before removing the fate of Mr Zaoui from any form of democratic process whatsoever.

Finally, and as Mohamed-Larbi Zitout indicates in his report to the Refugee Status Appeal Authority, if Mr Zaoui is extradited and returned to Algeria (or to another country that will not guarantee his protection) then we, as a country, will be responsible for fate. As you are well aware many political opponents of the Algerian regime been tortured and killed (or at best only “disappeared”). If Mr Zaoui were to be extradited from New Zealand on the basis of confidential information obtained via international intelligence agencies, then it is likely that this too would be his fate.

I urge caution. The move of extraditing Mr Zaoui without giving due consideration to the overwhelming evidence in favour of his innocence would irrevocably compromise New Zealand’s reputation as a just and reasoning democracy.

Regards,
Mike Mawson.

Introduction

I am aware that Mr Zaoui is in New Zealand seeking asylum and that he has been issued with a National Security Risk Certificate. Based on my dealings with him and my own research and contacts, I have the following comments to make concerning Mr Zaoui in relation to these matters. I have covered areas at Mr Zaoui’s counsel’s request. I believe I am qualified to do so based on my qualifications and prior dealings with Mr Zaoui.
I am a medical and health physicist and director of Aroua Health & Education Corporation, Switzerland. My credentials are as follows:

Director of the Hoggar Institute for human rights studies, focusing on North African countries, Geneva 1994

Participant at the Sant’Egidio meetings on the Algerian crisis (Rome, November 1994 and January 1995)

Founding member of Rehab organization for the rehabilitation of the survivors of torture, Lausanne 1995

Founder of the Movement for Truth, Justice and Peace in Algeria, 1998

Founding member of Justitia Universalis organisation against impunity, The Hague 2001

Member of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Historical Research on Algeria, Geneva 2002

Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Cordoba Foundation of Geneva for dialogue of cultures and peace studies, Geneva 2002

Spokesperson of the International Bureau of Humanitarian NGOs, Paris 2003

Ahmed’s Zaoui’s role

I met with Mr. Ahmed Zaoui several times during a decade of human rights activities. He was introduced to me, by a colleague, as a former lecturer at the Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Algiers, as a member of the Consultative Council of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and as a parliamentary candidate in the 1991 general elections in Algeria.
In the framework of our research activity at the Hoggar Institute I had many discussions and a regular written exchange with him, particularly after the Sant’Egidio meetings of the main Algerian opposition parties, held in Rome in November 1994 and January 1995, which he supported strongly.
Obviously, when we were preparing An Inquiry into the Algerian Massacres, a 1500-page investigation published by our Institute in 2000, we contacted Mr. Zaoui, who was then head of the Coordination Council of FIS abroad (CCFIS), to make inquiries about the nature of the Armed Islamic Group known as the GIA (the French acronym), to check claims about his alleged role within this organization, and to probe a few hypotheses about the relation of the latter with the FIS. His answer to our questions was that he had absolutely no link whatsoever with this organization (the GIA) and he informed us that he was himself sentenced to death by this armed group.
A two-year research on the GIA was concluded by the publication of a paper in English entitled “What is GIA?” by B. Izel, J.S. Wafa, and W. Isaac, which presented the arguments in support of the view that the GIA is a counter-guerrilla organization fielded by military intelligence. It was shown that the GIA embodies the identifying institutional attributes typical of a counter-guerrilla organization: i) irregularity attribute, ii) the compositional profile condition (especially command-and-control positions held by infiltrated military intelligence agents), and iii) the anti-insurgent operational attributes typical of a counter-guerrilla force). A second justification of the counter-guerrilla hypothesis focused on the functional identity of the GIA. The GIA was shown to operate in violation of all the strategic principles of guerrilla warfare, and in accordance with those of counter-insurgency warfare.
This thesis later received strong confirmation from soldiers, officers and two very high commanding officers (colonel Samraoui and colonel Benali) who deserted the army and military intelligence units, and either published memoirs and articles, or testified in documentary films shown for instance on Al Jazeera satellive TV and the French TV station Canal +, or gave witness accounts during the court case of general Khaled Nezzar against Lieutenant Souaidia for libel in Paris in July 2002.
In Algeria, the criminal acts of the GIA extended from individual assassinations to collective massacres of civilians, all of which served the strategy of the military junta, whose main concern was to deprive the FIS from the vital support of the population. Similarly, the terrorist acts perpetrated outside Algeria were the best way to criminalize the FIS and to isolate it at the international level. The Algerian military regime’s propaganda always sought, and seeks still, to associate the GIA with the FIS.
On the basis of our extensive and detailed research experience in Algeria’s political violence and human rights abuses, and given the statements I collected from M. Zaoui and from all of the information I have gathered about him and his communiqués as head of the CCFIS, I give no credence to the claims that he had been a member of the GIA, and I regard claims about possible links between him, a senior representative of the FIS, and the GIA as false and, as discussed below, contrived by the very regime seeking his elimination.
The Algerian Military Regime and Mr Zaoui
I believe that in the 1990s the Algerian regime viewed Mr. Zaoui as a significant political threat who had to be neutralized or eliminated. This explains why he was one of the main targets outside Algeria of both the Algerian diplomacy, in the service of the military regime, and the GIA which I regard as a counter-guerrilla organization infiltrated and commanded by military intelligence.
I should however add that the regime, though dominated by the advocates of the eradication of the political opposition (the self-styled ‘eradicationists’), should not be regarded as monolithic. There is actually a small faction within it that always sought a negotiated settlement. It is worth mentioning in this regard that, to my knowledge, one of the wings of the Algerian pouvoir, particularly President Bouteflika, approached Mr. Zaoui in 1999 in order to launch some sort of preliminary negotiations with the FIS. However, I am not aware if any progress was registered during these discussions, knowing that the ‘eradicationists’ who control the military institution are strongly opposed to any form of contact with the FIS.
The military regime regards Mr. Zaoui as a big threat outside Algeria, because he is a popular and influential figure. This is the reason he was elected to his parliamentary seat. His family background (son of a charismatic Islamic scholar respected throughout the country and even by the highest authorities), his specialized knowledge of religion and track-record of honesty and service to citizens have all contributed to making him a political figure people listened to and widely respected by a wide cross-section of the population. Moreover, there is the fact that President Bouteflika himself sought to consult Mr Zaoui which is further evidence of his political weight, his credibility and the public legitimacy which he holds.
The military regime, sure as it is of its huge and disproportionate military advantage, has always sought to have armed and fanatical zealots as opponents, since such fearful but politically harmless bogeymen serve only to legitimize their putsch, their widespread human rights abuses and their continued control of the country and its wealth. As soon as the putschist generals have in front of them an astute opponent who chooses to confront them in the political arena where they are naked and vulnerable, rather than in the military field where they are superior, they panic.
Mr Zaoui is precisely that danger because he chose the political line of confrontation, because he opposes them with the tactics of rationality rather than the emotionalism of zealots, because he uses the language of moderation rather than the rants of fanaticism. The Algerian generals of the ‘eradicationist’ type feel comfortable with the armed zealots who legitimize their rule, and provide the regime its justification for the violations of liberties and abuses of rights under the guise of the politics of ‘counter-terrorism’. The generals however regard as dangerous all those, who like Mr Zaoui, pursue the politics of peace, non-violence and negotiation. The problem is that the ‘eradicationist’ generals have perpetrated so many human rights abuses, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, besides the corruption charges that stand against them, that they have no hope or interest in the country returning to an era of peace where truth is bound to come out.
Media reports emanating from Algeria
In my view, to talk about free independent press in Algeria after the January 1992 coup is merely an illusion. Anyone who studies seriously this press will come to the conclusion that the main newspapers, in particular those published in French, are owned or fully controlled by the various conflicting groups within the hierarchy of the Algerian army. In the Algerian street it is commonly said: “Tell me for which newspaper you work and I will tell you to which clan of generals you are affiliated”.
At a more academic level, Professor Hadi Chalabi, an eminent Algerian jurist living in France, published in 1999 a study entitled The Algerian Press beyond any Suspicion (La presse algérienne au-dessus de tout soupçon, Ina-Yas 1999) where he deconstructed with strong evidence the myth of “Free and independent Press in Algeria”. In a public presentation of his book in Geneva in June 2000, fully reproduced in an attached file, Prof. Chalabi stated (pages 1-2):
“I endeavored to demonstrate in The Algerian Press beyond any Suspicion what hide the most famous French titles of the Algerian press. The choice of these titles (El Watan, Liberté, Le Matin, La Tribune) was imposed for another reason: these titles are credited, in Europe and in France in particular, of all the qualities of reference newspapers, representing the hope for democracy and freedom. These daily journals that define themselves as independent, have provided hundreds of associations, political parties and thousands of individuals, men and women, with a reading grid of the Algerian events of the 1990s, by reworking the colonial history of Algeria and that of the war of independence. The Algerian press in its main components was nothing and is still nothing than a strategic element in the shaping of the political currents in favor of the policy deliberately established by the military oligarchy as expressed by an occult council or a generals’ diwan (cabinet). The aim of the policy is limited to prohibit any access to freedom and democracy. The autonomy of the Algerian press is nothing than a deceit hiding and denying the political realities.”
In order to better understand the media functioning in Algeria please refer to the attached papers: “The Media Commandos in Algeria” by I. Latif and “Counterinsurgency (COIN) propaganda” by Y. Bedjaoui.
Criminal charges and convictions against Mr Zaoui in Algeria
I cannot comment on the precise criminal charges Mr Zaoui faces in Algeria, but I can give my view on the judicial system that has been governing Algeria since 1992. In a few words I can qualify this system as another instrument controlled and used by the Algerian Junta in the repression of all forms of political opposition.
Maître Abdennour Ali-Yahia, the president of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH – French acronym), in his introduction to An Inquiry into the Algerian Massacres (pages 11-12), wrote the following on the Algerian judicial system:
“Justice is a power according to the constitution. It is in fact the instrument of le pouvoir. The interference of le pouvoir in judicial affairs and the temptation to influence judicial decisions are the rule. Where there are no independent magistrates, there are only delegates of the authorities. In past political trials, the magistrates did not rule in conformity with the law and their conscience, but in accordance with the instructions given by le pouvoir, the justice minister and the security services involved. Justice does not control the police which has overpowered it: the judiciary only continues the work of the police the way the latter has indicated.

What the judges are required to know about a defendant is what he is, not what he has done. This is the time of fabricated trials, which are grotesquely reminiscent of the Moscow trials of 1936-1938, those of the Algerian war, and of the dissolved state security court and the special courts. According to Vichinsky’s theory, the perfect proof is the defendant’s own confession, obtained under torture — the charge being already a pre-sentence judgment that precedes the actual sentence. Under a state of emergency, asking for a fair trial in political matters is — as the political expression goes — tantamount to getting blood out of a stone.

Judicial crimes have been committed. Innocent people have been given severe sentences, while others have been sentenced to death and executed. This will remain an indelible stain on justice. Some magistrates will go down in history as butchers, not as judges.

Political asylum is flouted everywhere; it is in danger everywhere, especially in Europe where it is interpreted in an increasingly restrictive way through the adoption of repressive and deterring measures which contradict internal and international laws. To send back to Algeria political refugees, whose residence is not legal and who had fled their country to escape a ferocious repression, is tantamount to being accessory to the fate awaiting them on their arrival: torture and sometimes death.”

Maître Vergès, a well known Parisian lawyer, in his Open Letter to Algerian Friends Turned Torturers (Lettre ouverte à des amis devenus tortionnaires, Albin Michel 1993, find attached the text of the English version that will be published soon) compared the special courts established in Algeria right after the 1992 coup with sections spéciales set up by the Vichy government during World War 2. After explaining the conditions of the trials in such special courts, he concluded that “it is now up to the European governments to speak out and say whether they agree to extradite men condemned to capital punishment in these circumstances.”

French file
It seems that all of the criminal charges against Mr. Zaoui in France were built on a dossier fabricated jointly by Algerian military intelligence, formally known as the Intelligence and Security Directorate (Direction de Renseignement et Sécurité – DRS) and their French counterpart. At that time, Charles Pasqua was Minister of Home affairs and the Algerian and French services were collaborating very closely.
It is noteworthy that the French lobby that seemed to be behind the campaign against Mr. Zaoui could not even convince the French judiciary to seek his extradition, as the case against him (the dossier) was rather dubious and poor in evidence.
New Zealand national security

I understand that following the outcome of Mr Zaoui’s refugee appeal, there will be a further review of the question of whether he might constitute a threat to New Zealand’s national security. On this subject, I have a number of points to make, as follows:
Given the distance between New Zealand and Algeria, it would in my view be extremely unlikely that Mr Zaoui might be at risk in New Zealand of harm at the hands of either the Algerian regime or the GIA. The Algerian regime really does not have the means to be able to do anything to harm Mr Zaoui over such an enormous distance. Even official Algerian channels such as an embassy or a consulate do not exist in New Zealand, and the closest such channel would have to be the Ambassador in Indonesia. This is to be contrasted with the situation in Europe, especially France, where the regime is very well implanted diplomatically and otherwise. Clearly in a country such as France the risk to a person such as Mr Zaoui would be far more real.

I would make the additional point that the Algerian regime would hardly be prepared to act in a country such as New Zealand because of the fact that in recent years they have become more careful about their image outside the country. They are far less likely now to consider actions such as their operation in Paris in 1995 for example, in which they assassinated cheikh Abdelbaki Sahraoui, a founding member of the FIS. This was at a time when the regime felt threatened and weakened, but we are not now in that same historical era and things are more or less easier for the regime with Bouteflika in power. As such, the regime is working far harder on projecting a good image. In relation to a country such as New Zealand affording Zaoui refugee protection, the regime might try to protest using normal diplomatic channels but that in my view would be as far as any actions in respect of him would go.

The same would apply to the risk to Mr Zaoui at the hands of an armed group such as the GIA. In the light of my observations above, the GIA would in my view not act without the approval of the Algerian regime, and so if there is a political decision not to act outside the country, this would in my view be the position of the GIA as well.

I am not aware of what Mr Zaoui plans to do in New Zealand if he was to be granted asylum and permitted to remain there. If he was to become politically active once again, such activities would in my view hardly constitute a “threat” to New Zealand’s national security in any way – politically, diplomatically or even economically. European countries such as Great Britain, France and Belgium have for many years been host to a variety of political parties from other countries who are in exile. Such parties tend to be very active and have never posed any problem.

I should also add that things have been changing very rapidly during the past 3-4 years concerning the FIS and its image. In the mid-nineties, people in Europe were very confused and did not really understand the clear delineation between the FIS and the GIA or the relationships between the different groups. But since 1997-1998, things are becoming clearer for many as people now understand more easily the various connections and delineations between the Algerian political parties, the military regime and the various armed groups.

I have also observed a real change in the attitude of many European Governments towards the FIS. Several European countries are host to members of the new National Executive Bureau of the FIS: UK is host to Mr. Mohamed L. Chouchan and Dr. Abdelhamid Fenghour, Belgium is host to Mr. Abdelhamid Ali-Ammar and Mr. Brahim Filali, and Switzerland is host to Dr. Mourad Dhina and Mr. Mohamed M. Habès. The USA is also host to Mr. Anouar N. Haddam who is member of the FIS National Executive Bureau as well. Germany too is host to the sons of Dr. Madani Abbassi who is the founding leader of the FIS.

In my observation, western governments in general are changing in their attitudes towards the FIS, understanding that the FIS is a real and legitimate political force in Algeria and realizing that they must deal with it. In this sense, the demonisation that the FIS fell victim to at the hands of the Algerian regime during the nineties has abated somewhat, and there is growing emergence of acceptance of the FIS as a legitimate political force. I doubt therefore that western governments would act adversely or wish to exert pressure on a country such as New Zealand in the case of a respected and prominent FIS leader, and in fact I would expect they might well be glad that the Zaoui dossier has finally been accepted.

I would also venture to suggest that if New Zealand national interests are a subject of debate in the Zaoui case, then in the medium and long-term the interests of New Zealand people ought to lie with the FIS and with its leaders such as Mr Zaoui, rather than with the Algerian military regime – a junta that in my view is bound to disappear eventually. If governments are wishing to build strong, durable relations with Algeria, then they will need to build these on strong foundations. The only way that this will likely to be achieved is for foreign governments to act on the side of legality and legitimacy in Algeria. To this end, the FIS and its leaders such as Mr Zaoui are the real political force in Algeria and the future in that country in my view belongs to them.

Mr Zaoui in my opinion would also have much to offer the New Zealand community in a positive, constructive manner. First, at the Algerian level, he could well be the starting point for the development of real relations and understanding between New Zealand and Algerian people. There is a great deal of mutual benefit to be attained between the countries as we do have huge complimentary resources in both countries. Second, I knew Mr Zaoui well from my talks and exchanges with him. A Professor of Comparative Religious studies, I have observed first-hand his very moderate and constructive view of the Muslim religion, and have little doubt that a man of his caliber can be a very positive force in the discourse both within the Islamic community in New Zealand and in the evolution of understanding between different faiths in that country. Mr Zaoui believes very firmly in dialogue between religions and cultures, and I believe his reasoned approach is the best approach to adopt in order to face the various strands of extremism on all sides. An individual of his intellectual level, school of thought and openness of mind would in my view prove enormously useful in nurturing an open, modern and progressive Islam in New Zealand. In this way, his presence in NZ could only work for the benefit of the country.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to quote a Swiss journalist who knew Mr. Zaoui when he was in Switzerland and who is willing to assist the appropriate New Zealand parties as appropriate or necessary. This quotation was sent to me by e-mail.

“From all the conversations I had with Mr. Zaoui during my meetings with him, I have not felt anything else than an exemplary moderation and discretion, and I never had the impression to be in front of an extremist. Mr. Zaoui had his own political line, but never mentioned using violence to defend this cause. On the contrary, he always condemned violence, and at a personal level I noticed a remarkable devotedness of Mr. Zaoui to his family.”

(Antoine Gessler, Journalist, International Politics, Le Nouvelliste Newspaper, Sion, Switzerland)

I would agree with these comments of Mr. Gessler. Based on my own personal observations of Mr. Zaoui I would add that I was impressed by the attachment of such a political figure to sport and to football in particular. I was also most impressed by the degree of optimism he shows concerning the resolution of the Algerian conflict, and also by his remarkable sense of humor.

Dr Abbas Aroua
July 2003

REPORT – AHMED ZAOUI

I have been asked to prepare an expert report on Mr Ahmed Zaoui. I am advised that Mr Zaoui is presently seeking asylum in New Zealand and that he is detained in a maximum security prison in New Zealand on security grounds.

Qualifications

I hold the following qualifications:

1. D.E.S. in public law.

2. D.E.A. Urban studies.

3. Doctorat d’Etat (Public law) University of Grenoble II (1981).

Current Positions

I am a full time researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Since 09 1997 I work for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the Director of the French Center for Archaeology and Social Sciences in Sanaa (Yemen).

Previous Positions

I have worked in the following capacities

1. Assistant professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Constantine, Algeria, 1973 – 1980.

2. Assistant professor at the Institut d’Etudes politiques, University of Grenoble, Septembre 1980 – June 1982.

3. Chargé de recherches at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) (from the first of January 1982 ) and based at the Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman (IREMAM) d’Aix en provence (1982-1988).

4. Centre d’études et de documentation juridique, économique et sociale (CEDEJ) Le Caire (1989-1994).

5. IREMAM (from January 1994) and Institut d’Etudes Politiques de l’Université d’Aix en Provence. Chargé de cours for the Arab World option of the « Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies » of comparative political science , Institut d’études politiques d’Aix en Provence.

6. French Center for Yemeni Studies, French Center for Archaelogy and Social Sciences (Sanaa) , 1 October 1997 (Director).

Main Publications

I have compiled the following publications:

1. Articles in journals or chapters in books dealing with political or ideological developments and especially Islamic Movements in contemporary Arab world.

2. Les Villages socialistes de la révolution agraire , Paris, Editions du CNRS, 1984 (en coll. avec M. Nancy).

3. L’Islamisme au Maghreb : la voix du Sud , Paris, Karthala 1988 and updated version, Payot (Bibliothèque de Poche), Paris 1995.

4. Al Islam al siyassi : sawt al-jenûb , Cairo, Dar al ‘alam al thalith, November 1992. (updated Arabic translation). Updated edition in 1997.

5. The Islamic Movement in North Africa (translated by William Dowell), University of Texas Press at Austin, 1993 (updated English translation) 1997 (updated edition).

6. Il Fondamentalismo islamico , SEI, Torino, 1995 (updated Italian translation)

7. L’Islamisme en face , Paris , La Découverte, 1995 ; updated paperback version , Paris, La Découverte, 1996 (Coll. Poche), 2003 (updated third edition).

8. El Islamismo cara a cara , Bellaterra, Barcelona, 1996 (Spanish translation).

9. Modernizing Islam : Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East John Esposito, François Burgat (dir), Hurst and Company, London, novembre 2002, 278 p.

10. Face to face with political islam, Tauris, Oxford, novembre 2002, (Updated edition of L’Islamisme en face).

11. La Libye , PUF, Paris, (Poche Que sais-je?), 1996, 2000, 2003.

I have been a visiting Lecturer at the following Universities and Research or Cultural Centers:

Universities

Un d’Amsterdam, UN d’Arizona (Tucson), Un de Bar-Ilan (Jérusalem), Un de Barcelone, Un de Benghazi (Libye), Un de Bergen (Norvège), U de Boston (USA), U de Bruxelles, American University in Cairo (Egypte), U of Columbia (School of International and Public Affairs, NY, USA) U de Copenhague (Danemark), U de Grenade (Espagne), Harvard U. (USA), U d’Helsinki (Finlande), U Hébraïque de Jérusalem, U de Tel-Aviv (Israel), U de Joensu (Finlande), U Islamique de Khartoum (Soudan), U de Kuala Lumpur (Malaisie), U du Caire (Egypte), U de Liège, Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgique), U de Madrid (Espagne), U de Mafraq (Jordanie), U of Oklahoma, U de Montréal, U Mac-Gill (Canada), U d’Oslo (Norvège), U de Pennsylvanie (Philadelphie), U de Sanaa (Yémen), U Tampere (Finlande), U Tel Aviv (Israel), U of Texas (Austin), U de Tokyo, U de Téhéran, U Santiago du Chili (Chili), U de Bir-Zeit and Naplouse, (Palestine) etc

Research Centers and other Cultural Institutions

L’Académie des sciences de l’URSS (Moscou, Institut d’Etudes Africaines), l’American Research Center in Egypt, l’Association des parlementaires de l’OTAN (Lisbonne) , l’Association parlementaire euro-arabe (E A U Dubaï), l’Agence espagnole de coopération internationale (Madrid) , le Centre d’étude sur les migrations internationales (Paris), le Centre de documentation Tunisie-Maghreb (Tunisie), le Centre d’études stratégiques d’Al-Ahram (Le Caire), theCentre Français d’Etudes Yéménites (Sanaa), the CHEAM-FNSP (Paris), the Collège Royal de Défense (Bruxelles), Commissariat d’Etat au Plan (Commission Nord-Sud), la Délégation aux affaires stratégiques (Paris) , l’Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), la Fondation Bouabid (Rabat), la Fondation Agnelli (Turin), la Fondation des Etudes de Défense (Paris), la Ford Foundation (Le Caire), le Fonds d’Action Sociale (Paris), la Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, le Groupement d’études et de recherches sur la Méditerranée (Casablanca), l’Institut pour la Paix (Tampere, Finland), le Japanese Institute of Middle Eastern Economies, l’Institut Français d’Etudes Arabes de Damas (IFEAD, Damas), la Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Nord-Sud-Exports Consultants (Paris), la London School of Economics, la Multinational Force and Observers (MFO-Sinaï), la North South Coalition (Oslo), l’Ordre des Comboniens (Le Caire), le Parlement Européen (Commission culturelle, Bruxelles), la Royal United Service Organisation (Londres), Shasha Institute (Jérusalem), la School of Oriental and African Studies (Londres), le Secrétariat des relations avec l’Islam (Paris), le Social Science Research Council (Oxford), la United Association for Studies and Research (Virginia), le World Affairs Council (Amman) the Middle Eastern Studies Center de l’Université d’Amman, le King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (Riad, Arabie Saoudite) the World Economic Forum (Davos in New York), Centre islamique de Buenos-Aires (Argentine), le National Council for Culture, Arts and Heritage (Doha, Qatar), the Norwegian Institute for International Studies (NUPI, Oslo) etc.

The frame of my analysis of the political situation in Algeria and details on the 1990 2003 crisis and, among other issues, the different levels of responsability for violence can be found in my article, “The Islamic movement in North Africa”, University of Texas Press, Austin sd edition 1997, and in my article, “Face to face with political Islam” IB Tauris, Oxford, 2002.

AHMED ZAOUI

Mr Ahmed Zaoui was a candidate at the parliamentary elections of December 1991. I met Ahmed Zaoui when he was a resident in Brussels and came to be informed of his belonging to the moderate component of the Algerian FIS.

I have been asked to comment on a number of issues relevant to Mr Zaoui’s refugee appeal and to other security-related matters in New Zealand. I set out my opinion and comment below.

Allegations that Ahmed Zaoui was involved in the GIA

I am aware of accusations claiming that Mr Zaoui has been involved in the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), and even that he was the “Head of the GIA in Europe”. These are baseless statements. Mr Zaoui was a member of the legal political party, the FIS which won both local and parliamentary elections in June 1990 and December 1991. As such, because of his party’s legitimacy, Mr Zaoui was “criminalised” and repressed by the Algerian military regime.

The GIA is widely recognised as a creation of the Algerian secret service. The radical branch of the GIA in fact did exist for some time, but as soon as in the early-mid 1990s it began to be widely manipulated by the Algerian regime. Several books (see, for example, “La Sale Guerre” et al, quoted in “Face to face with Political Islam”) contain very credible evidence and testimonies on this precise issue of the Algerian regime manipulating the violence of the “GIA”.

The entire range of the so called “independent” press in Algeria, including the so-called independent “El Watan”, lies firmly in the control of the diverse sections of military power in the country. Even when some “real” evidence does happen to be published, it is usually only the result of one of the military “clans” hoping to take advantage of it for use against another. But the Algerian media network is mainly used to spread the official version of the violence, that is, to criminalize its political opposition and make all political “resistance” fit into a mere security and “terrorism” agenda.

There is a campaign of repression in Algerian launched by the military regime against members of the FIS – a democratically-elected party which had dared to win two elections in a row. I should add that the biggest threat to the Algerian regime is its fear of the ballot box and of moderate legal political opponents such as the FIS and Ahmed Zaoui. The regime prefers political violence and attempts to criminalize its political opponents in order to then “justify” its own widespread state terror.

Through my work and research I am very familiar with the means by which Algerian official media networks and foreign journalists have been influenced and sometimes manipulated by the very efficient Algerian military secret services. These services constantly attach the label of “militant” or “terrorist” to any resistance to their brutal and entirely-illegal campaign of repression.

Forged and false evidence

I am deeply convinced that forged reports by Algerian secret services (including press and NGO’s) are a very common means of their action abroad.

I have personally attended a US Court case of another FIS executive member, Mr Anwar Haddam. In that case I discovered that evidence of forged and fraudulent accusations found in “reports” that had been presented by so-called “independent” non-governmental organizations and official Algerian informers were forged.

Providing forged reports is the most common means used by the Algerian authorities in their attempt to influence foreign courts. In one case at least, evidence had been forged by French counter-terrorist police (in the case of the leader of the “Fraternité Algérienne”). France jailed the leader but he was eventually freed a few years later by another court.

Mr Zaoui and New Zealand

In my emphatic view, Ahmed Zaoui could not possibly represent any threat, either physically, economically, or politically to New Zealand interests.

Ahmed Zaoui has a political agenda which is national i.e. Algerian – rather than international – in nature. In spite of the false accusations against him, it has never been demonstrated that he has had any links with militants or armed groups. Therefore I could see no reason why granting him residence in New Zealand could represent the slightest danger for New Zealand. If a political opening occurs in Algeria (and in my view it will no doubt occur in the future), I am sure Mr Zaoui would more than likely be happy to return to his homeland.

I do not think that the Algerian authorities, either directly or through their GIA, are in any situation to export the conflict outside Algeria any longer, and certainly not to a country as far from Algeria as New Zealand. Mr Zaoui may be wanted by the Algerian authorities, but he does not represent such an important stake as, say, the top FIS leaders Mr Ali Belhaj or Dr Abbassi Madani do. Moreover, the Algerian authorities now know that western countries are no longer as naïve about the Algerian situation as they used to be; consequently they no longer manipulate their “GIA” as they did previously.

In my opinion, if Mr Zaoui was granted political asylum in New Zealand, this would not only represent no danger for New Zealand but it would, on the contrary, demonstrate the high level of understanding that the New Zealand authorities have of the complexity of the crisis in many countries of the Arab world. It would demonstrate an ability to deal with difficult issues in the Algerian context on a more sophisticated, more intelligent and more humane basis than the highly dangerous and repressive stance adopted by the Algerian military dictatorship.

This could indeed raise the level of mutual understanding and cooperation across a very large range of Arab and Muslim public opinion throughout the world, and in my view would in the near future represent a very positive contribution towards New Zealand relations with a large portion of the globe.

François BURGAT,
CNRS CEFAS
Sanaa 10 July 2003

DATE UNKNOWN

COMMENTS ON THE CASE OF AHMED ZAOUI

1. I am a solicitor, working in private practice with Howells of Sheffield. I work principally in criminal and prison law, human rights and miscarriages of justice. I have been a Director of Liberty (National Council for Civil Liberties) for several years, and for the last nine years I have been a member of the lawyers’ panel of the FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) based in Paris. In this latter capacity I have undertaken, both alone and with human rights lawyers from other countries, missions of inquiry to Mauritania, India, Austria, Armenia and the United States.

2. More relevantly in the context of the comments which follow, I have been a member of two missions to France : one in 2002, focusing on the legal, social and political circumstances of asylum seekers at the refugee centre of Sangatte, near Calais; the other in 1998-1999, concerned with anti-terrorist legislation and its application in France. I understand that the report in the 1998-1999 mission, which I alone wrote, is available to the RSAA.

3. I have been asked to comment on the case of Mr Ahmed Zaoui, who is currently involved in proceedings before the RSAA. I have been sent by McLeod and Associates, who act for Mr Zaoui, copies of the English translations of four documents :

(i) The Judgment (Decision) of Brussels County Court of first instance, dated 3.10.95;

(ii) The Judgment (Decision) of the Court of Appeal in Brussels, dated 20.11.95;

(iii) The Judgment (Decision) of the Tribunal de Grande Instance (Higher Criminal Court) in Paris, dated 13.9.01;

(iv) A letter dated 22.5.03 from Gilles Vanderbeck of Becker & Associés, the Belgian lawyers who acted for Mr Zaoui in 1995, to Richard McLeod.

4. In addition, I have been able to refer to the text and preparatory notes of my own report from 1998-1999, as well as the basic court documents for the “Chalabi” trial of 138 defendants, the “Réquisitoire” (the prosecutor’s case against the defendants – about 500 pages long), and the “jugement” (verdicts and sentences – of similar length) of the Tribunal Correctionel, pronounced on January 22nd 1999. I have been provided with copies of documents 1, 2, 3 and 4 above in the original French and am satisfied that the translations, if not always particularly fluent, accurately render the meaning and legal terminology of the originals. I shall refer in my remarks to the page numbers of the English translations.

5. At the County Court of Brussels in 1995, thirteen defendants, including Mr Zaoui, faced a variety of charges, detailed in the opening pages of the decision : Mr Zaoui was charged essentially with possession of stolen passports and belonging to “an association formed with the purpose of perpetrating crimes against people or properties …” These charges are similar in their wording to those faced by Mr Zaoui in Paris in 2001, i.e. falsification and/or theft of passports and participation in an association of malefactors formed with a view to preparing one or more acts of terrorism (see p.6 of the French judgment). It should however be noted that the Belgian Penal Code at the time of the first hearing in Brussels did not include provisions specifically aimed at “terrorism” (see page 4 of Mr Vanderbeck’s letter).

6. There has in the last twenty years been a rapid rise in co-operation on security matters among interior ministers of the European Community, the result of which has been ever closer alignment of the pertinent legislation and procedures. This has been most pronounced in relation to political asylum, in particular in the Dublin Convention and the Schengen agreement, both of which codified the exchange of information among the signatories and led generally to a narrowing of the interpretation of the terms of the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees.

7. At the same time repression and national upheavals were producing ever larger numbers of political refugees from countries such as Turkey (predominantly Kurds), Sri Lanka (alleged sympathisers with the Tamil Tigers), Iraq (again Kurds and political opponents of Saddam Hussein), Saudi Arabia and – especially important for our present concerns – Algeria. In the 1990s the British and other European governments were put under pressure by many of these refugee-producing countries to stop harbouring political dissidents. In 1993 the German government responded by proscribing over 100 organisations believed to be associated with the PKK (the Kurdish Workers’ Party) and arresting many of their members. In the same year the French government bowed to Algerian pressure and banned the FIS (the Front Islamique du Salut). The FIS was on the verge of a landslide victory in the Algerian parliamentary elections in 1992 when the military stepped in and annulled the results. Those who actually staged what is described by most commentators as a military coup and their ideological successors are still in power today. It is not without significance that the “historical” summary which prefaces both the Chalabi and the Ali Touchent “requisitoires” plays down the nature of that coup. In so doing, it casts opponents of the regime which has ruled Algeria from the end of 1991 to the present day in a particularly sinister light. (See pp. 10-11 of my FIDH report).

8. Along with the increasingly strict asylum regime has gone a proliferation of anti-terrorist laws throughout the European Community. All too often the parliamentary debates around such new measures have blurred the differences between the issues of asylum and terrorism, to the extent that, for instance in Britain, the popular view is that the one is the progenitor of the other. It has been suggested, with some justification, that, were Nelson Mandela to apply today in Britain for political asylum, he might well find himself detained without charge as a suspected terrorist under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.

9. It seems to me that both the Belgian and French charges of belonging to an “association” amount to allegations of conspiracy. And just as jurists working in the Anglo-Saxon or adversarial system find “conspiracy” a difficult, even elusive concept, so French legal commentators have had trouble in imbuing the terms “association” (with or without the “malfaiteurs”) with substance and certainty. (See pp. 9-11 of my FIDH report).

10. In this respect, the comments of the Brussels County Court judges on Mr Zaoui make interesting reading (see pp. 13-15 of their decision). They talk of the “raising of a presumption” and of the “raising of a hypothesis”, about the nature of his contacts and activities, but after listing all the “presumed” activities and contacts, conclude that the prosecution has failed to provide “conclusive material proof” of his active participation in a criminal association and therefore acquit him on three charges, leaving the fourth to lie on the file. That appears to me to be a correct decision, based on the summary of the allegations provided in the preceding pages of the judgment.

11. Six weeks later, however, the matter came before the Court of Appeal in Brussels after the prosecution lodged an appeal against the lower court’s decision. The Court of Appeal’s judgment is somewhat surprising. It appears to rehearse all the evidence available to and heard by the lower Court, but to draw totally different conclusions from it. Page 17 of the Court’s decision is especially instructive. The “presumptions” and “hypotheses” of the lower Court are translated into a certainty (“there is no doubt …”) that Mr Zaoui had “an undoubted prestige and a moral authority which have allowed him to assume the role of head or agent of the association that he commands …” His “life and activities thus appear to be surrounded by an unacceptably clandestine atmosphere,” which in turn leads the court to “form a serious, precise and concordant presumption that charge C4 against Zaoui must undoubtedly be upheld.”

12. Compare this to page 29 of the Paris judgment six years later, where strikingly similar phrases are to be found : “state of total clandestinity” and “an important place within the FIS.” The Appeal Court decision and the Paris judgment are, in my view, of a piece. They proceed from suspicion and hypothesis to certainty without establishing in any way what the respective associations were intent on doing. Indeed, the Brussels decision (see page 15) almost makes a virtue of not doing so : “Whereas it is not necessary to find out what exact involvement the defendants’ activities were linked to, be it the FIS, the FIDA or the GIA, and whether their reasons were Algerian-based or internationally based, such a question is outside the limits of the charges under which they have been arrested.”

13. This corresponds to the interpretation of the equivalent French provision by Mayaud, which I discuss on page 9 (col. 2) of my FIDH report. There is, I would suggest, in both these statements such a dilution of the concept of conspiracy that it becomes indistinguishable from that of guilt by association.

14. I dealt in my FIDH report (pp. 31-32) with what I saw as the shortcomings of the system which over the years has allowed the small team working under Maître Bruguière to conduct the vast majority of terrorist investigations in France. It is not possible to discern from the documents in my possession whether that team was responsible for the investigations leading to the appearance of Mr Zaoui and others before the Tribunal de Grande Instance, but the comments of the Tribunal indicate that it is simply regurgitating the allegations of the “juge d’instruction” rather than submitting them to close scrutiny. To that extent they resemble the much longer (because there were 138 defendants) sentencing remarks of the Chalabi tribunal.

15. One of the most disturbing features of the Paris case is the apparent ease with which the Tribunal accepts the word of a co-defendant, Mr Boudjaadar, as persuasive evidence against Mr Zaoui. It is axiomatic in English (and no doubt New Zealand) criminal law that the evidence of a co-defendant, even (or perhaps especially) if given on oath, should be approached with great caution. The danger of such evidence being purely self-serving, the risk that it could be the product of pressure or inducements – it is little wonder that a co-defendant’s testimony is regarded as something of a poisoned chalice.

16. One looks in vain for any hint of caution in this respect in the Paris judgment on Mr Zaoui. If there are reservations in the judgment, they are to be found in the sentences : both Mr Boudjaadar and Mr Zaoui were given suspended sentences of three years imprisonment! It is worth remembering at this point that the Court of Appeal in Brussels in 1995, in overturning Mr Zaoui’s acquittal, likewise imposed a suspended prison sentence.

17. It is difficult not to infer from these two decisions that the verdicts were somewhat political in nature, rather than soundly based on cogent evidence. If the Paris court had any qualms about the evidence of Mr Boudjaadar, the Court of Appeal in Brussels must surely have been less than wholly convinced by its own reasoning (see page 16 for the passages most blatantly implying guilt by association); otherwise it could hardly have passed such a lenient sentence.

18. Beyond the absence of compelling evidence, of course, the Paris court must have been fully aware that the allegations against Mr Zaoui dated from 1993, that his first appearance in Court to answer those allegations was over seven years later, in December 2000, and that a further nine months elapsed before judgment was pronounced on 13.9.2001. All in all, it took the French criminal justice system over eight years to bring the trial of six defendants to finality. That is quite clearly a breach of Article 5(3) and 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights. I have dealt with the issue of delay at some length in my FIDH report (pp. 11-14) and therefore respectfully urge the RSAA to note my comments there.

19. A cursory study of the cases where the European Court of Human Rights has found unjustifiable delay in bringing defendants to trial reveals that France is disproportionately represented among those states which have failed the test of “reasonable time”. One startling statistic which I discovered during my investigations for the FIDH report was that something like 60% of all prisoners in French gaols are on remand, awaiting trial.

20. Since concluding my FIDH report, I have been able to study the Chalabi judgment in some detail, and it is clear to me that in very many cases the prison sentences passed have corresponded more or less with the time spent in prison on remand by the prisoners concerned. I can see no reason why, in a case involving only six defendants, one of whom himself supplied much of the evidence relied on by the Court, over eight years should pass before its conclusion.

21. On the other hand, I find it hard to understand how such serious allegations can be satisfactorily dealt with in the course of a mere six hearings (the Belgian case apparently took up only five hearings), of which one (8.12.00) was merely a preliminary hearing and one (13.9.01) was reserved for the verdict and sentences. As with the Chalabi case, it is obvious that the hearings consisted almost exclusively of evidence read to the Court by the prosecutor with little or no interruption in the form of live witnesses, cross-examination or testimony given by defence witnesses. In those circumstances it is hardly surprising that the Court’s judgment amounts to little more than a re-hash of the prosecution case. Little wonder, either, that the judgments against Mr Zaoui, both in Paris and in Brussels, lean so heavily on speculation and the notion of guilt by association. The fact that Mr Zaoui had been deprived of his rightful parliamentary seat in Algeria, that he had been forced to flee and live a clandestine existence, is in effect held against him and deemed to be incriminating by both higher Courts, whereas the County Court in Brussels took care not to draw such one-sided inferences.

22. Mr Vanderbeck’s letter makes it clear that, as in France, the defence lawyer does not have a right to obtain free of charge copies of the dossier being compiled on his client. A charge of 0.5 Euros per page (in France for the Chalabi trial it was 3 FrFr, roughly the same amount) is levied. If the client has no funds and the defence lawyer cannot afford to foot the bill (a huge one in the Chalabi case, where the dossier ran to 50,000 pages and “voluminous” in the Zaoui case, according to Mr Vanderbeck), the inevitable result is that there is no possibility of mounting a proper defence. It will be objected that the investigating magistrate is duty bound to uncover both inculpatory and exculpatory evidence, but my investigations into the Chalabi and other French cases reveal that the “juges d’instruction” charged with such matters have proved largely indifferent to the defence case. I deduce from the available Belgian papers that that applies equally to the Brussels cases.

23. At first glance it might appear that defence lawyers in France and Belgian are nonchalant to the point of negligence in respect of their clients’ cases. But in neither country is there any proper system of public funding which would allow the lawyer to undertake his/her own investigations, obtain copies of the dossier and generally mount a defence in a manner compatible with Article 6(3) of the ECHR. As one of the French defence lawyers put it to me in 1998, he and his colleagues were little more than “potiches” (ornamental vases) in the criminal process.

24. One of the great virtues of the adversarial system is the implicit recognition of the contradiction (when it comes to criminal proceedings) between the state and the individual defendant. It follows from that recognition that the individual should be enabled (by public funding where he or she does not have the means) to contest the state’s allegations with “equality of arms”. The inquisitorial system in my view, by assigning the roles of both “prosecutor” and “defender” to a state employee, loses sight of that contradiction.

25. A curious feature of Mr Zaoui’s trial in Paris is his address as recorded in the Court judgment : BP9328 Ougadougou (Burkina Faso). Mr Zaoui was tried in his absence, having had to leave Switzerland for a safe haven in Burkina Faso some time before his trial. He had been interviewed, but once only and then for no longer than an hour or two, by the “juges d’instruction” while still in Switzerland. He did not have the means or the travel documents to travel to France for his trial, let alone prepare for it and give instructions to a lawyer. Since the “juge d’instruction” and the prosecution between them had taken seven years to prepare the case for trial, there seems little justification for hearing the case in his involuntary absence. Trials in absentia run a serious danger of being one-sided and unfair, even under the adversarial system with a defence counsel in possession of the prosecution papers and with some understanding of the defendant’s case. How much worse, then, was it for Mr Zaoui, who, unable to get to Paris from Burkina Faso, was represented at Court by a lawyer, Philippe Petillault, who it seems he had neither met nor instructed and who, moreover, was also representing at least four and possibly all five of the other defendants, including Mr Boudjaadar, effectively the state’s prize witness! I understand that McLeod and Associates have tried to contact Mr Petillault to discuss the case – and doubtless also the obvious conflict of interest – but he has asked for a substantial honorarium before acceding to their request. To allow two defendants with such contradictory interests to be represented by one and the same lawyer is to countenance a travesty of justice.

26. In general, I find the documents which I have read relating to Mr Zaoui’s trials in Brussels and Paris quite inadequate as evidence of due process. The laws under which he was prosecuted are vaguely worded, leaving too much room for speculative interpretation and application. The state’s case, compiled by the investigating magistrates and the prosecution, in both French and Belgian jurisdictions, is long on innuendo and suggestion , but short on substantive proof. The trials themselves were clearly brief and perfunctory, largely if not exclusively paper exercises. His defence counsel could not possibly have taken instructions from him, and moreover should not have been representing both him and Mr Boudjaadar. And even if his defence counsel had not had a conflict of interest, the totally unacceptable passage of time together with the cost and time involved in gaining access to the dossier, would have made it impossible for him to mount a proper defence and hence have a fair trial.

27. I have referred several times in these comments to my FIDH report. I respectfully urge the RSAA to read that report in conjunction with the Brussels and Paris documents. I believe that the members of the RSAA panel will have no difficulty in seeing that the misgivings that I had four years ago about the Chalabi, the Medhi Gomri and the Ali Touchent cases are equally valid in relation to Mr Zaoui’s experiences at the hands of the Belgian and French criminal justice systems. Such misgivings, if accepted as reasonable by the RSAA, should at the very least call into question the safety of his convictions and their value in assessing Mr Zaoui’s claim for asylum.

If I can be of any further assistance to the RSAA, please contact me at the address given at the foot of this letter.

Michael McColgan
Solicitor of the Supreme Court
Howells
33 Love Street
SHEFFIELD
S3 8NW

Tel : 0114 249 6666

Email : mmccolgan@howells-solicitors.com

By Emile Joffe : Wednesday 1st January 2003 My name is Emile George Howard JOFFÉ and I have been asked to provide a report on an application for political asylum in New Zealand made by Ahmad ZAOUI . I have never met Mr Zaoui and cannot therefore comment on his personal claims except insofar as they have been confirmed by the public record or other reliable sources. I should like to emphasise that these comments are made for the sole purpose of aiding the Tribunal to reach its decision and are not intended to be understood as seeking to argue in support of or deny the applicant’s own claims. I do have considerable knowledge of the situation in Algeria that lies behind his claims and I shall refer extensively to this in the comments that follow. I consider that I am competent to make these comments as I have studied Algerian and North African affairs since 1973 and have written extensively on them.

Until the end of February 2000, I was the Director-of-Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs and I am now attached to London and Cambridge universities. I am the director of the Centre for North African Studies at the Centre of International Studies in the University of Cambridge. I also hold a research fellowship at the Centre for International Studies at Cambridge University where I also teach a postgraduate course on contemporary North Africa and the Modern Middle East component of the History Tripos degree. I have specialised in North African affairs for the past twenty years, taking a particular interest in Algeria since 1986. I am the visiting professor in the Geography Department at King’s College in London University, as well as having held a visiting fellowship at the Centre for International Studies in the London School of Economics and Political Science up to October 2001. I am also an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute of Strategic Studies . Currently I am a visiting scholar in the history department at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia.

I was also, inter alia , a founder member of the editorial board of the journal, the Journal of Algerian Studies , which is published by Frank Cass & Co. I am also founder and co-editor of the Journal of North African Studies with Professor John Entelis and was, until March 2001, co-editor of Mediterranean Politics with Professor Richard Gillespie, a journal which I helped to found. I have published widely on matters connected with Algeria in the media and in academic journals, as well as commenting regularly on them on radio and television in Britain and abroad. Amongst the publications most relevant to this issue are the following:-

“Terrorism and Fundamentalism in the Middle East”, in Thomas C. & Saravanamuttu P. (eds)(1989), Conflict and consensus in South/North security , CUP (Cambridge)

“International law, conflict and stability in the Gulf and the Mediterranean”, in Thomas C. & Saravanamuttu P. (eds)(1989), The state and instability in the South , Macmillan (London)

“Iran, the southern Mediterranean and Europe: terrorism and hostages”, in Ehteshami A. & Varasteh M. (Eds)(1991), Iran and the international community , Routledge (London)

“North African responses to the Gulf crisis” in Anon (1991), North Africa: economic structure and analysis , EIU Regional Reference Series, The Economist Intelligence Unit (London)

“The Maghrib” in Sluglett P. & Farouk-Sluglett M. (eds)(1991)(revised 1995), The Middle East: the Arab world and its neighbours , Times Books (London)

“The Western Arab world”, in Nonneman G. (Ed)(1992), The Middle East and Europe: an integrated communities approach , Federal Trust for Education and Research (London)

“Reactions in North Africa to the conflict in the Gulf”, in Gow J. (Ed)(1993), Iraq, the Gulf conflict and the world community , Brasseys (London)

“Democracy in the Maghrib”, in Jawad H. (ed)(1994), The Middle East and the New World Order , MacMillans (London) and St Martin’s Press (New York)

“The European Union and the Maghrib”, in Gillespie R. (ed)(1994), Mediterranean Politics Yearbook , Pinter Press (London)

“Algeria: the failure of dialogue”, in Chapman S. (ed)(1995), The Middle East and North Africa 1995 , Europa Publications (London)

“Low-level violence and terrorism”, in Aliboni R., Joffé G. and Niblock T. (eds)(1996), Security challenges in the Mediterranean region , Cass (London)

“Algeria’s foreign policy and the New World Order: the tragic loss of a revolutionary ideal”, The Journal of Algerian Studies , 1 , 1 (1996)

“Islam in the Maghrib and Maghribi Islam”, in Rosander E.E. & Westerlund D. (eds) (1996), Islam in Africa and African Islam , Hurst & Co (London)

“Algeria: army and government”, Islamic World Report , Summer 1997.

(with Luis Martinez and Abdelkader Abderrahim) (2000), Crisis in Algeria; not over yet , International Crisis Group (Brussels)

The Algerian economy , (2001) International Crisis Group (Brussels)

“The role of violence within the Algerian economy”, Journal of North African Studies , 7 , 1 (Spring 2002)

The current situation in Algeria

The crisis in Algeria, which started in October 1988 with massive riots, followed by three years of confused political and economic reforms in a new, formally democratic environment, was irredeemably worsened by the interruption of the legislative electoral process in December 1991, followed by the army-backed coup in January 1992. The army’s fears had been that the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS – Jabha Islamiyya li’l-Inqadh ), Algeria’s major Islamist political party, would win the elections outright and convert Algeria into an Islamic state [1] . Within a year, the Islamist movement had moved into clandestinity and open hostilities between the army-backed regime and clandestine armed groups had begun. One of the clandestine groups, the Mouvement Islamique Armée , later to become the Armée Islamique du Salut (AIS – Jaysh Islamiyya li’l-Inqadh ), specifically directed its attacks against the security forces; the other, the Groupes Islamiques Armés (GIA – Jama’at Islamiyya Muslaha ) turned on the population, announcing in 1994 that it would attack foreigners, security personnel and civil servants, and Francophone intellectuals. Subsequently it widened its scope of targets to cover all those who did not actively support its objectives.

In the years that followed, up to 1999, an officially-admitted 100,000 persons died – the true figure is probably closer to 150,000 – and up to 20,000 persons “disappeared” [2] whilst in custody. Although the death rate, which had run at around 1,000 persons a month, fell in the wake of the election of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April 1999 and a partial amnesty was declared between June 1999 and January 2000 [3] , it shortly thereafter began to rise again, although it was also temporarily suppressed in December 2001 by a sustained security force campaign – which could not be indefinitely sustained, particularly as it showed meagre results. Since then it has settled into a level of 100-to-200 persons a month, partly because of security force action and partly because of a change in terrorist tactics which appear to be more concerned with creating secure urban and rural redoubts than with simple terrorising of the local populations. As a result, the security forces have now switched to dismantling terrorist support networks and reducing these redoubts instead, although this has had little appreciable effect on the level of violence, which continues to oscillate around the norm stated above.

An indication of these changes emerged at the start of 2002, when a new campaign of violence began in major cities, which had been relatively calm for the previous year. The capital itself was subjected to a major bombing campaign, with at least twenty bombs being planted in the city during January alone (Le Matin , 31.01.2002). This continued until August when the group responsible was arrested, with the last attacks taking place in early June a year. There was a similar rise in violence elsewhere, particularly in Kabylia and in Algeria’s second largest city, Oran. Violence is now carried out by the old GIA, which has not disbanded, although it was disabled by the loss of its leader, Antar Zouabri [4] , in mid-February (Le Matin, 15.02.2002) and which was held directly responsible for the bombings in Algiers (Le Matin , 29.01.2002), and another group that split off from it in December 1997 and adopted the former AIS agenda of targeting the security forces – the Groupe Salafiyyiste pour la Predication et le Combat (GSPC – Jama’a al-Salafiyya li’d-Daw’a wa’l-Jihad ). Twenty-one soldiers were killed by one Islamist group, linked to the GIA but calling itself, confusingly, the Groupe Salafiyyiste pour le Combat , at the start of April 2002 (El-Watan , 02.04.2002) and military losses have escalated again in the early part of 2003, with a sixty-member army detachment being put out-of-action in January. The result is that Algeria continues to be governed under a state of emergency, by a regime that depends on the armed forces for its survival.

In recent months, the GSPC has entrenched itself in its strongholds around Skikda and Collo in the east of the country and in Western Kabylia in the centre, with another branch in the central Sahara where it is believed to be responsible for the spectacular kidnapping of 31 tourists in February and March 2003. It has also begun to penetrate into the Mitidja plains around Algiers and there are fears that it might soon penetrate the capital. The GIA, on the other hand, after an apparent period of quietism, has remerged in the Saida-Mascara region and in the remote parts of Relizane, Chlef and Tissemsilt provinces. It also seems to have adopted new tactics, targeting the security forces and paramilitary units, rather than engaging in the wholesale massacres of the past, although these still do occur. It has become, in other words, much closer to the GSPC and there are fears, at present scarcely voiced, that the two groups may unite. Were this to have occurred, the security forces in Algeria would face a completely new situation which might be beyond their capacities to control. Indeed, in late January 2003, the Algerian army suffered the greatest losses it has ever experienced in a single day when an elite team of sixty commandoes was ambushed in mountains in the Batna region and lost 49 men dead and eleven seriously injured!

Quite apart from organised violence of this kind, the last year has seen an outbreak of spontaneous violence all over the country which is not directly connected with political Islam. This reflected the appalling conditions in which most Algerians live, over 10 per cent of the 30-million strong population is in shanty-towns and the country’s housing stock, at 4 million units, is 2 million short of demand and very dilapidated. Algeria has one of the highest rates of occupancy in the world, at 7.5 persons per housing unit. The recent earthquake in the Kabylia-Algiers region, in which 2218 persons died and over 10,000 were injured in mid-May 2003, underlined the problems for it was the most recently built structures that collapsed, underlining the massive corruption that exists in the construction sector.

This spontaneous violence has been mirrored, over the past twenty four months by organised violence in Kabylia where the local population is demanding administrative autonomy after a shooting incident on April 16, 2001. Demonstrations have been organised by informal, tribally-based village councils – the archs – and, up to the start of Ramadan 2003, had been able to force out a series of concessions from the regime. Trouble has subsided in recent weeks, particularly after the failure of a planned march on the capital, Algiers, on December 10, 2002. Feelings are still raw, however, and violence could erupt at any moment, especially as there are no meaningful contacts between the protesters and the government, despite official hints to that effect and many leaders of the movement have been sent to prison.

Even though the Algerian authorities claim to have tamed violence, the evidence is that this is not the case, even though news reporting of violence is carefully controlled by the government as the state of emergency has been renewed for the thirteenth successive year. Although Algeria has been able to reinforce its diplomatic image as a result of the events of September 11, 2001 by pointing out that international terrorism is a reflection of the difficulties its own government has faced since 1992, the expected material support, especially from new allies, such as the United States, in addition to long-standing supporters, such as France, has not materialised. Indeed, regime and army anxieties on this issue are now substantial and official fingers are beginning to be pointed at the United States for not supplying promised military equipment. Algeria has gone out of its way to support the war on terrorism, claiming that the clandestine movements and the FIS itself were merely symptoms of the global malaise that has allowed the al-Qa’ida to flourish. It believes that it has persuaded European states of its analysis and has collaborated closely with the American government. Now it expects a pay-off in terms of military equipment.

The role of the army and the security forces

The sad fact is that the majority of the civilian losses in this conflict have been caused by security force action [5] . The 180,000-strong armed forces themselves are backed up by a 25,000-strong gendarmerie which comes under military authority and a mass of paramilitary militias, the Gardes Communales and the Gardes légitimes d’auto-défense , also known as the “patriotes ” which include some 200,000 men under the control of local authorities [6] . The intelligence function is provided primarily by the ubiquitous securité militaire service (more correctly now known as Direction des Renseignements de Securité – DRS), formally under the control of the interior ministry but in reality under the control of General Mohamed ‘Tawfiq’ Mediène, which is completely unaccountable for its actions and has always been so. The regime, too, is dominated by the army, with three generals – Mohamed Lamari (the chief of staff), Mohamed Mediène and Mohamed Touati (presidential military adviser and the so-called “intellectual” of the military) – controlling the civilian government, with the support of the grandees of the regime, retired generals Khalid Nezzar (former defence minister and responsible for the 1992 coup) [7] and Larbi Belkhair (former interior minister and suspected of responsibility of the assassination of President Boudiaf in 1992) [8] .

The importance and arbitrary power of the military and the security services cannot, therefore, be under-estimated. The quintumvirate mentioned above have made and broken presidents ever since 1991 (Chadli Bendjedid (1979-1992), Mohamed Boudiaf (1992), Liamine Zerouel (1994-1998) and Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1999 until the present) and have, at will, redrawn Algeria’s constitutional system. Until recently, they had been contemplating a further reconstruction of the political scene, involving a suspension of all political activity for three years and then a managed restructuring of the political parties within a secular governmental system. Now, however, they claim that they do not want to be involved in the day-to-day management of the past and will withdraw to the barracks. Nobody really believes this but there may be less direct meddling in political decisions. The reality of power, however, will remain with the army command. This absolute power is at its most acute within the security services [9] who are notorious for the habitual, continuous and severe abuse of human rights that they practice.

Attitudes towards political Islam

It is also clear that the authorities maintain an acute and unchangeable hostility towards the various Islamist movements in Algeria. The FIS, of course, continues to be banned and has virtually disappeared as an organised party since March 1992 when the ban came into force, although it still has a skeletal organisation structure and massive informal support. Its proposed replacement, the Wafa party, was banned, even though it met every requirement of the latest electoral law at the start of 2001 and was led by a highly respected former minister of education and foreign affairs, Ahmad Talib Ibrahimi [10] .

Only one movement based on political Islamic principles, the Harakat al-Mujtama’a is-Silmi (HMS – the Movement for a Peaceful Society, originally known by the acronym HAMAS), has been continuously allowed to operate as a legal political party and then only because it supports regime objectives. Yet, on occasion, its members have also been arrested and severely ill-treated by the security forces and its leader, Mahmoud Nahnah, one of the founders of the Algerian Islamist movement in the 1980s, has also been victimised. In 1995, for example, he was allowed to stand in the presidential elections of that year but he was excluded from the 1999 presidential elections, although the criteria for a candidacy to be accepted had been the same in both cases. Furthermore, his exclusion was also based on information that was untrue, relating to his role in the independence struggle for Algeria. He faced a major threat to his position since, in November 2001, he admitted supplying up to thirty groups of Algerian volunteers to the mujahidin in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Since it is illegal for political parties and leaders to entertain relations with foreign governments, Mr Nahnah faced the threat of crippling legal action although, in the event, nothing was done, probably because the publicity in itself was felt to have adequately discredited him.

His party suffered heavily in the legislative elections on May 30, 2002 in which his support base massively decayed, to be overtaken by another Islamist party, the Islah . In these elections, incidentally, the Kabylia did not vote, in protest at what its population considers the government-imposed violence there – a similar boycott was imposed by the archs on the local elections on October 10, 2002. The result has been that the two major secular opposition parties, the FFS and the RCD, are now excluded from national politics since they supported the legislative boycott. The RCD also supported the municipal boycott, although the FFS did not and has formal representation at municipal and provincial level, as a result.

The other formerly legal Islamist movement, the Hizb an-Nahda , was broken up in April 1999 during the presidential elections which brought Abdelaziz Bouteflika to power as president [11] . The Hizb an-Nahda was a moderate Islamist movement, founded in Constantine in 1980 by Abdallah Djaballah [12] . It was inspired by the ideology of the Egyptian Ikhwan Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood), although it was not linked to this movement. Although it enjoyed good relations with the FIS after 1988, it continued to be a separate party and embraced political pluralism. In the wake of the army-backed coup in 1992, it was allowed to continue an autonomous legal existence but was subject to continual pressure to support the regime. This became particularly strong after January 1995, when it was one of the co-signatories to the Sant’ Egidio Platform (see below) and thus declared itself to be opposed to the Zeroual presidency’s plans for a new constitution.

Eventually, in the run-up to the presidential elections in April 1999, it split as a result of a government-backed initiative within the party’s central committee and now no longer exists as a viable political force. Its militants are often viewed by the regime as FIS sympathisers and treated accordingly. Mr Djaballah created a new Islamist party, the Mouvement pour la Réforme Nationale (MRN), also known as al-Islah , but faced great difficulties in view of official hostility although, in a personal vote for Mr Djaballah during the legislative elections in May 2002, his party was returned to the parliament as the largest Islamist movement there. It now acts as a permanent Islamist opposition to the government inside the Assembly.

The Algerian Islamist movement

The conventional view is that the virtual civil war of the past twelve years has been the consequence of the threat to established government posed by a political movement based on the exclusivist principles of political Islam which succeeded in winning a substantial majority of the vote in democratic elections. As a result of its fears about the implications of such a victory, not least because the movement, the FIS, had threatened to reform the Algerian constitution along sectarian lines, the army stepped in as the guarantor of the constitution and aborted the democratic process. The state then faced a virtual Islamist insurrection which it has only recently controlled.

There is an alternative narrative, in which the incompetence and corruption of the established political and military elite – effectively a nomklatura , which because of its occult access to economic benefit which it sustains through political repression is also effectively a mafia and, because of its wide links to the French army in which many of its senior officers served, is also popularly considered to be the hizb fransa (Party of France) – generated a populist response which chose the most available and appropriate cultural and ideological paradigm, that of Islam, to express its outrage and then faced official and violent repression as a result. The virtual civil war that followed was predominantly a populist response to such repression which has now degenerated into a stalemate in which any opportunity of genuinely democratic government has been lost by the intransigence of the ruling elite and the alienation of the mass of the population. As a result, Algeria faces a prolonged period of repressive government shrouding itself in a democratic veil – the “façade democracy” of which many Algerians complain – in which human rights abuses continue unabated, as does populist violence. However, insofar as the Islamic paradigm is seen – largely incorrectly – as the core of the problem rather than as a symptom of it, the nature of the Algerian Islamist movement is essential to an understanding of this complex conundrum [13] .

Political Islam in Algeria has a long and honourable history. It developed as a consequence of the wider Islamic response to European colonialism and technological superiority that had to be confronted in the nineteenth century, as the Ottoman empire decayed. By the 1860s, this response had become codified into the Salafiyya movement, promoted by Jamal al-Afghani, which argued that Muslims should look into the traditions of early Islam, typified by the Rashidun caliphate, to find the inspiration through which to meet the intellectual and technological challenge of the West. His ideas, which were inherently a modernist response to the shock of European intervention in the Islamic world, were immensely influential and were popularised throughout the Arab world by individuals such as Mohammed Abduh in Egypt and Chekib Arslan in Lebanon. In Algeria, they inspired the first wave of the use of Islam as a rallying point in trying to rebuild a sense of political and moral autonomy within the context of French settler colonialism there, in the wake of the visit by Mohammed Abduh to Algeria in 1903.

The early days

The Algerian islah (reform) movement began in the 1920s under Shaykh Abdulhamid Bin Badis who had been inspired by Mohammed Abduh and, in 1930, it was codified in a political association, the Association des oulemas algériens , committed to reforming Islamic practice in Algeria in order to assert a sense of Algerian identity based on being an Islamic society within the context of the wider Muslim community, in contradistinction to the secular assimilationism of intellectuals such as Ferhat Abbas who was quite prepared to accept integration of Algeria into France, provided that Algerian personal and religious status could be preserved. The nascent Islamist movement in Algeria, therefore, was also an expression of Algerian particularity. In this respect it differed from the very similar Islamic reform movement created in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the Ikhwan Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood) which also drew its doctrines from the earlier Salafiyya movement but now set them within a specific political context [14] .

A further reason for its creation was the missionary activity in Algeria, encouraged by Cardinal Lavigerie and by the “White Fathers” – a Trappist order – that was particularly active during the 1920s and 1930s and was seen by Muslims as an attack on Islam itself [15] . Furthermore, most converts were made in Kabylia, amongst the Berber population there, as part of France’s policies of dividing Berber and Arab populations in Algeria. The Trappists have continued a presence in Algeria in the wake of independence in 1962 but do not now proselytise. They now engage in providing social services, particularly in their monastery in Tibherine – which is where the 1996 massacre of seven of their number took place [16] . Under the independence agreement, the 1960 Evian Accords, Christianity and Christian sites are protected in Algeria and the best tangible evidence of the Christian presence in the country is provided by the church of Notre Dame de l’Afrique, just outside Algiers where many of the Berber converts are commemorated. This coincidence of Berbers with conversion to Christianity has added to a popular conviction in the Arabophone parts of Algeria – picked by the extremist religious groups – that Berbers are not true Muslims [17]

The movement sought to re-Islamise Algerian society through social work and reviving religious practice, rather than through active political commitment – which would have been impossible in the colonial context. However, although Bin Badis died in 1940 and was succeeded in the association by Shaykh Bashir al-Ibrahimi, the father of Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi (see above), the Algerian reform movement soon became caught up in more overtly political activity as Algerian nationalism came ever more openly into conflict with the French colonial authorities. After the Sétif massacres in 1945, which marked the beginning of the overt struggle against French colonialism, secular nationalist movements filled the political arena and the Islamic movement was marginalized, but it continued to enjoy a wider dimension of support throughout Algeria as the natural vehicle for the expression of Algerian collective Muslim identity. Thus, although marginal in political terms, its significance for nationalist ideology was paramount and the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) that became the vehicle of the war against France explicitly claimed to be an Islamic movement as well as a movement for national liberation.

After independence

In the wake of the war for independence, which ended in 1962, socialist ideas dominated inside Algeria’s new collective political life. However, the role of Islam was never far behind and the new ruling elite, particularly after the 1965 coup, which brought the army commander, Houari Boumediènne, to power, made space for a formal Islamic role within the state. Education was often placed in the charge of ministers known for their piety and commitment to Islamic values and the role of Islam in the new Algerian identity – as an Arabo-Muslim state – was supported. At the same time, the slightest hint of Islamic political interest was stamped on and a formal political role for Islamic thinkers was marginalized. An Islamic association was, nevertheless, permitted and the Al-Qiyam organisation was established in the early 1960s by Malek Bennabi, a charismatic journalist and intellectual, and Mohammed Khider, one of the nine chefs historiques of the Algerian revolution. It was subsequently suppressed by the Boumediènne regime which brooked no rivals for power, even implicit ones, but which adopted much of its social agenda [18] .

The Islamic movement, however, became a rival within the decade because of two factors. One was the push by the Boumediènne regime for the Arabisation of Algerian collective administrative and intellectual life. One of the consequences of French colonialism had been to make French, rather than Arabic, into the administrative and intellectual language for the country and, as part of the process of nation-building, there was a conscious programme to reverse this. The Arabisation programme, however, required a large number of teachers that Algeria did not possess, so Egyptians were brought in instead. They brought with them the Ikhwan Muslimin , so that the first appearance of the Muslim Brotherhood as a coherent organisation in Algeria dates from this time, under the name of the Jama’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (The Association of Muslim Brothers).

The movement had to make itself felt against the indigenous Algerian Islamic movements that had very similar agendas to its own and that harked back to the original Association created by Bin Badis in 1930, also from the principles of the Salafiyyist movement. Indeed, Algerians themselves never really distinguished between the Brotherhood and movements such as those that now developed from the old Al-Qiyam which had finally been banned in 1970. The new movements, known in Algeria collectively as the Ahl ad-Dawa’a (The People of the Call), now emerged in opposition to the powerfully centralised state that the Boumediènne regime had created and, up to the end of the 1970s, quietly amassed their support base within the population, particularly amongst the urban poor and lower middle classes.

Indeed, as popular discontent mounted with the Algerian experiment in political and economic development towards the end of the 1970s, the Islamist movement received ever-greater support, in part augmented by the relative leniency shown to it by successive governments. At the same time, its popularity was increased by the Arabization programme undertaken in the late 1970s and early 1980s to counter the persistence of French as the major language and culture for Algeria. However, those who were Arabophone in terms of education and training found themselves disadvantaged in terms of employment and isolated in terms of culture because of the continued dominance of French as a commercial language and because of the role France continued to enjoy in Algeria’s wider cultural context. They were therefore drawn towards the authenticity of an Islamic alternative – something which was encouraged by the fact that many of the teachers employed in the Arabization programme were Egyptian and linked to the Ikhwan Muslimin , as mentioned above.

By 1984, the movement had its own leaders – Shaykh Nahnah, today the leader of HMI-Hamas, and Shaykh Sahnoun, alongside Shaykh Soltani, who died in that year. Although his death, at his home in Hussein Dey on the outskirts of Algiers, where he was held under house-arrest, had been kept out of the news, within a few hours the surrounding streets were flooded with 25,000 mourners, indicating the depth of support that already existed in the capital for the Islamist movement. It also had its own ideologues. Shaykh Soltani had published a widely read attack on the Boumediènne regime, and Malek Bennabi was also widely read as Algeria’s own theoretician of the Islamist movement throughout the region. And the movement had its martyrs, which further increased its social prominence. In the wake of the Berberist riots of April 1980, clashes between Berberophone and Arabophone students in Algeria’s universities, which effectively set Francophone secularists against Arabophone Islamists, had resulted in deaths and arrests, particularly in 1981 and 1982. The government responded to these incidents with considerable brutality, sentencing those involved to long prison terms.

At the same time, the authorities also continued to try to placate Islamist supporters, appointing officials who were sympathetic to the underground movement and its values to senior positions in government, especially in ministries connected with religious issues, and encouraging the widespread construction of mosques. Since, in Algerian law, mosques came under state control only when their construction was completed, many Islamic activists left new mosque buildings deliberately uncompleted so that they could be used as centres for education and propaganda outside official monitoring and control. By the end of the 1980s, a majority of mosques were uncontrolled, a situation which persisted up to 1992, when the new post-coup regime brought in regulations that ended this anomaly. In addition, the authorities tried to adjust Algerian legislation to match Islamist concepts of public morality and social order. Thus, in 1984, the Chadli Bendjedid regime introduced new family legislation which undermined the independent status of women and reinforced their normative inferior role in accordance with more conservative interpretations of shar ‘ia religious law.

During the 1980s and particularly between 1984 and 1988, government ambivalence towards the Islamist movement allowed the movement to garner more popular support, particularly in poor urban areas where the level of youth unemployment was as high as 30 per cent of the youth labour force (and 70 per cent of the Algerian population were below the age of thirty). In 1986, as mentioned above, in a precursor of the 1988 riots, trouble broke out in Constantine. Islamists did not initiate the disturbances, which had begun among students protesting at living conditions; but, by their end, Islamists were prominent in controlling and directing the rioters and they emphasized the need for the public segregation of men and women, particularly in the context of student residences where conditions had been at the root of the disturbances.

At the same time, the more extreme members of the Islamist movements began to question the legitimacy of the Algerian state on the grounds that the FLN had originally capitalized on Algeria’s Islamic heritage to justify its call to arms against French colonialism. Yet this legacy and source of legitimacy had been abandoned, once Algeria became independent, so that the FLN had no right to claim a revolutionary legitimacy that properly belonged to their vision of the Islamic movement, in their eyes. They also had the experience of the struggle in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation in the 1980s, which had been led by extremist Islamist groups with American and Saudi support. In the mid-1980s, therefore, a clandestine group, led by Mustapha Bouyali – a former FLN militant during the war for independence and subsequently a gendarme – emerged in the Blida-Boufarik area and launched attacks on the security apparatus of the Algerian state. Although the group was eliminated in 1987 and Mustapha Bouyali himself was killed, whilst his supporters went to prison, they were released in 1989 and some became, not only members of the FIS (see below) but also founder-members of the armed clandestine Islamist resistance after the army-backed coup in 1991-92.

By 1988, therefore, although the Islamists were as surprised as the government when the riots that brought Algeria’s single-party state to an end exploded, they were ready to garner the fruits. Some leaders, such as Shaykh Sahnoun and, initially, Shaykh Nahnah, were determined to avoid direct political involvement. They formed the Rabita al-Islah wa’l-Irshad (The Movement for Reform and Guidance) as a national association designed to influence the political process without taking direct part in it. Others, however, led by Abbassi Madani, who had been an FLN activist during the war for independence, were determined to seize the opportunity. One of the results was the creation of the FIS in 1989. It was the subsequent success of the FIS that persuaded Shaykh Nahnah to reform the Islah wa’l-Irshad into a formal political party, first known as Hamas and subsequently as the HMI, after the electoral law was changed in 1997 to exclude political parties that referred, inter alia , to religion or language in their platforms or names. Shaykh Sahnoun refused to join him in the formal political arena.

The Front Islamique du Salut

As mentioned above, the FIS was not the only Islamist political party. Hamas , however, sought to participate in the formal political scene as, in effect, Algeria’s own branch of the Egyptian Ikhwan Myslimin , for Shaykh Nahnah had formal links with the Egyptian organisation’s international branch. An-Nahda , which was created in the Constantinois (the High Plateaux region of central Algeria which extends to Sétif), had a carefully worked out programme that sought to Islamize political life in Algeria and which was also based on the ideas of the Ikhwan Muslimin , but also accepted the democratic option. It was never, however, been prepared to collaborate with the regime. In this respect it had been very different from Hamas, whose leader stood in the 1995 presidential elections. The Hamas party also enjoyed minor governmental representation as a result of its cooperation with the regime, while the an-Nahda movement suffered continual harassment and the arbitrary arrest of its cadres for refusing to comply with regime demands for cooperation until it decided to accept the constitutional reforms introduced in 1997 [19] .

The FIS was, however, something more than an Islamist party, although it was certainly concerned with political action. Unlike these others, it sought to create a movement that brought together as many members as possible, whatever their specific political platforms, and which, furthermore, challenged the claim of the FLN to embody the legitimate inheritance of the Algerian revolution. As was often said in Algeria, ‘Le FIS est le fils de l’FLN’–’The FIS is the son of the FLN’. As part of this catholic appeal, it attracted adherents of three major Islamist currents to its banner: the Salafiyyists who had been the backbone of the original Islamic movement; the Djazara’a group , sympathizers with the ideas of Malek Bennabi who sought a specifically Algerian Islamist solution [20] , unlike the universalism of the Salafiyyists ; and the Afghanistes , Algerians who had fought with the Mujahidin in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviet Union, as well as a much larger number who sympathized with the Mujahidin and their neo-Salafiyyist ideas. In this respect, the FIS was quite different from an-Nahda or Hamas .

Since each of these groups had a different agenda, it is not surprising that the FIS found it very difficult to evolve a specifically Islamist political programme. No detailed economic programme was ever suggested; much of the platform as put forward for the 1990 municipal and 1991 legislative elections was concerned with public order and public morality – a theme which brought together a wide measure of public support. Otherwise it was devoted to a sustained attack on the corrupt values and practices of the old FLN regime and of the consequences of secularism and French influences in Algeria. It should also be borne in mind that much of the growth in FIS support occurred during the crisis over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and, although the movement had relied on the Gulf states for part of its original financial support, the movement quickly divined the popularity of pro-Iraqi sentiment amongst the population and exploited it.

Despite the legal creation of the FIS on 1 March 1989, its party platform contravened the new electoral law that expressly banned political movements based on language, region or religion. Nevertheless, its wide political base ensured that it rapidly became a mass movement, claiming for itself the revolutionary legitimacy that had, until then, been the prerogative of the FLN and the Algerian army. In municipal elections in June 1990 it won a crushing victory, gaining control of 856 of Algeria’s 1,541 municipal councils and 31 of 48 provincial assemblies. It gained 55 per cent of the vote, completely humiliating the FLN, which gained only 32 per cent of the vote and won control of 487 municipal councils and 14 provincial assemblies.

This success was to be repeated, albeit less convincingly, eighteen months later when much-delayed legislative elections were held. The FIS won 188 of the available 232 seats in the National Assembly outright in the first stage of a two-stage election, and was expected to win eventual control of the Assembly, but its share of the votes cast had dropped significantly and its share of the overall available votes had fallen to only 25 per cent of the total. Nonetheless, it was clear that the FIS would be able to form a government and, much to the anxiety of the regime, it threatened, too, to call for an Islamic state in Algeria. And it would have more than the necessary two-thirds majority in the Assembly necessary to legislate changes to the constitution to achieve this. This situation immediately brought it into head-on collision with the fundamental tenets on which the Algerian state had been based and revived fears among the country’s military leadership that Algeria’s revolutionary ideals, and their vested interests in the status quo, would be threatened.

The army had been an integral part of the Algerian regime up to 1988 – indeed, it had, in effect, been the regime! In the wake of the riots and in view of Chadli Bendjedid’s promise to reconstruct the Algerian state under a strong presidency within a multiparty political system in 1989, in which the army would have to role of guaranteeing the integrity of the state [21] the army had officially withdrawn from politics but retained the right of intervention if it believed the constitutional position to be threatened. This it was to do on two occasions. The first was in June 1991, during FIS demonstrations against a new electoral law which essentially gerrymandered electoral boundaries to the FIS’s disadvantage against the FLN. Then the army unilaterally arrested the movement’s leaders, Abbassi Madani (now under house arrest after a brief period at liberty during the summer of 1997) and Ali Bel Hadj (still in prison in Blida). They were subsequently sentenced by a court in Blida to twelve years in prison – he is due for release in June 2003.

The FIS tried to respond to these changed political circumstances; with one faction of the movement wishing to find an accommodation with the regime to avoid further repression, even if that meant the loss of its political programme. The other faction was determined to maintain its political role as guaranteed under the constitution and fight the promised legislative elections on that basis. At an important party conference in Batna towards the end of the year, the compromisers were trounced and the party elected Abdelkader Hachani, a former prominent Djezar’a member, as its leader. The compromisers eventually accepted positions in government in the aftermath of the coup. Yet, even then, fears about the regime’s intentions over the legislative elections persisted and it was only two weeks before the actual vote that the FIS decided that it would actually fight the elections. Its fears were to prove to be fully justified as the army was determined not to accept any outcome that gave the FIS a prominent political role in the future.

Thus, in the aftermath of the first round of the electoral process in December 1991, it simply aborted the electoral process, turned out the president and appointed its own collective presidency. The army also turned against the FIS, determined to eradicate it from political and social life. By the beginning of March 1992, the FIS had been declared illegal and, by the middle of the year, there were isolated outbreaks of violence. Up to 12,000 FIS militants were arrested and interned in prison camps in the Sahara for varying periods of up to two years. Within the year, clandestine violence had become widespread and extended to urban areas, with the Islamist opposition controlling considerable areas of the country. Violence, in any case, was eventually to become the currency of real political debate in Algeria, both for the governing regime and for the clandestine opposition derived from the FIS. This situation continued up to the end of the 1990s and, despite attempts by the Bouteflika regime to find a basis for national reconciliation after the presidential elections in April 1999, continues to be the case up to the present day.

The clandestine opposition

The real danger to public order in Algeria, however, developed after the army-backed coup in January 1992, particularly when clandestine Islamist resistance emerged in 1993. The civilian population soon faced a particular danger, not from the FIS or its successors, the Mouvement Islamique Armé (MIA – Harakat Islamiyya Muslaha ) and the Armée Islamique du Salut (AIS – Jaysh Islamiyya li’l-Inqadh ) which sought to force the new regime to restore the electoral initiative disrupted by the coup, but from the GIA. Both movements, however, insofar as they espoused violence, looked back to an earlier paradigm, the Bouyali movement in the 1980s, which had been created by a former FLN activist and mujahhid from the war for independence, Mustafa Bouyali. As pointed out above, Mustafa Bouyali considered that the FLN had betrayed its trust and that an authentic Islamic solution was the only way forward for Algeria. He, therefore, organised a group in the maquis and mountains around Blida, to offer a challenge of violence against the state. Although he was killed in 1987 and his followers were imprisoned, his reputation was to inspire those who, in 1992, believed that violence was the only way forward. Indeed, some of his lieutenants were to lead the new groups, particularly the GIA.

The development of the armed groups

The GIA (Groupes Islamiques Armés – Jama’at Islamiyya Muslaha ) was commanded by a series of leaders who became steadily more extreme in their views and policies and were progressively eliminated by the army, whilst, at the same time, suspicions steadily grew within the Islamist movements that it had been profoundly infiltrated by the military security system, the DRS. Its origins are located in the army-backed coup in 1991 and the subsequent repression of the Islamist movement. Locating the outbreak of violence is difficult; some authors point towards the an incident in February 1992 when six policemen were killed in the casbah of Algiers, others argue that it was an incident in Guelma when a police station was attacked in early 1992. Whatever the actual incident, the first sign of an organised Islamist opposition was the spontaneous development of isolated armed cells throughout the country. The nucleus of the new movement appeared, however, in the Algiers region when Mansour Miliani, a former Bouyali activist, took over a group of Afghanistes in January 1992.

Miliani had originally been close to Abdelkader Chebouti, another Bouyali activist who, like him, had been arrested when Bouyali was killed and who had also been released from prison by President Bendjedid after the October 1988 riots. Ahmed Chebouti rejected the extremist vision of the Afghanistes , supporting the FIS objective of restoring the electoral process. He eventually became a founder member and leader of the MIA (Mouvement Islamique Armé ) which subsequently, became the AIS. Although Miliani himself was arrested in July 1992, after actions including an attack on the Amirauté in the heart of Algiers the previous February, the group survived because it linked up with a second group of activist youth who sympathised with its views and objectives. This group, created by Mohamed Allal, who was killed in September 1992, effectively took over the leadership of the combined group, now known as the Groupe Islamique Armé and led by Abdelhak Lyada who had originated from Allal’s group.

By this time already, the breach with the MIA, led by Abdelkader Chebouti, was complete, after the failure of an attempt at unifying the clandestine Islamist opposition in September 1992. Instead, the group went its own way, rejecting any suggestion of fusion with the MIA except on its own terms. The MIA, however, continued to broaden its contacts and, in March 1993, it formed links with other independent organisations, including Said Mekhloufi’s Mouvement pour un Etat Islamique (MEI). The GIA itself continued a violent ant-FIS and MIA campaign and began a series of high-profile attacks, coupled with threats against the security services, government servants, school teachers, Francophone intellectuals and foreigners. In 1993 it publicly warned these groups that they were at risk and began a campaign of violence.

Abdelhak Lyada was arrested in July 1993, to be followed, after a confused power-struggle, by Djaafar al-Afghani and, in February 1994, by Cherif Gousmi. Despite the rapid turnover in its leadership, the group continued to be distinguished by the violence and profile of its attacks and this attracted much support, particularly from the autonomous urban-based groups that began to emerge, linked to the trabando networks (see below). Its hostility towards the FIS constantly increased, with strident attacks on FIS and MIA leaders and threats against them. By May 1994, the GIA was at the height of its power and attracted support from yet other autonomous groups and from the more activist FIS members who sought more effective ways of confronting the regime. This brought under its wing the MEI, the FIDA (Front Islamique du Djihad Armé ) and former FIS leaders such as Mohamed Said and Abderrazak Rejam. The MIA, in response to this development, reformed itself under Madani Mezrag into the AIS, recognising the GIA, now the Groupes Islamiques Armés , as its major threat.

However, with the death of Cherif Gousmi in November 1994, the new-found unity fell apart as a result of the growing extremism of the GIA itself. The movement itself became even more intolerant of dissent and increasingly targeted the FIS itself, claiming responsibility for the murder of Abdelbaki Sahraoui, a highly respected founder-member of the FIS, in Paris. Between September 1995 and November 1994, the new head of the GIA, Djamal Zitouni, eliminated putative rivals, including most of the FIS leaders who had rallied to him. By now, there were intense suspicions that the GIA was heavily infiltrated by the DRS and that most of its high-profile operations were directed by the regime to discredit the Islamist movement overall. Indeed, in the past two years there have been several accounts from participants in the regime’s anti-terrorist operations, suggesting that the GIA had been “turned” and was effectively now a counter-terrorist operation, integrated into the military strategy of the regime [22] .

The result was that many of the groups that had allied themselves with the GIA in 1994 now broke away in disgust at its internecine violence and the increasing extremism of its rhetoric and actions. The breakaway groups, many of whom sought links with the AIS instead, included the MEI, the Mouvement Islamique pour la Dawa et le Djihad (MIDD), under Mustapha Kertali, and the Ligue Islamique pour la Dawa et le Djihad (LIDD), under Ali Benhejar. The latter two groups only coalesced later from individuals whom had split off from the GIA in disgust – the MIDD in July 1996 and the LIDD in February 1997. These groups joined the AIS and, when in October 1997, the AIS declared a unilateral ceasefire with the army, they followed suite and took advantage of the civil concord law in January 2000 to end the armed struggle against the regime. Zitouni himself was killed in July 1996 – either by GIA dissidents or by the DRS, and was succeeded by Antar Zouabri [23] until he was killed in mid-February 2002. Under Zouabri, the extremism and violence of the GIA became completely indiscriminate, leader to the horrific massacres of 1997 and 1998 – although, once again, great care must be exercised over these incidents as it is quite clear that the greatest beneficiary from them was the Algerian state. There is considerable indirect evidence of state involvement and some direct evidence as well, which is discussed below. First, however, it is necessary to consider what was the intellectual and doctrinal justification for these practices.

The justification

In essence, the group has carried on the tradition of the extremist groups that go back to “Afghaniste” and extreme neo-Salafiyyist traditions of one branch of the Islamist opposition created in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The original GIA had argued that the Algerian state was irredeemably tyrannical (taghut ) and corrupt (hughra ) and had to be replaced by force through its destruction, an attitude that was easily distorted to authorise the programme of indiscriminate killing. Before this happened, however, in an attempt to disrupt and weaken the state, the GIA leadership warned in 1994, as mentioned above, that it would target civil servants and security force personnel, together with foreigners and francophone intellectuals, particularly journalists. Over 70 journalists have died since1994, together with almost as many foreigners, while over four hundred schools have been burned to the ground, with many of their teachers killed. The total cost to the Algerian state of this damage, quite apart from the loss of life, is estimated at around $20 billion. The numbers of civil servants who died are not known, but the many false road blocks, manned by GIA militants – often within urban areas because police control was so weak – provided an ideal opportunity for “exemplary punishment” of those whose identity cards revealed them to belong to one of the forbidden categories. Military personnel and persons working for the Algerian armed forces – even if not undertaking military service – were preferred targets. Foreigners, too, were selected targets, largely because they were kufar , infidels, and disturbed the uniformity of Islamic practice that the GIA sought. The few converts to Christianity in the country were particular targets because of Islamic views over apostasy [24] . This was worsened by the fact that many converts were also Berber and Berbers have been considered by some Islamists as persons who cannot be true Muslims because of their use of tamazight or French as their means of communication, rather than Arabic.

The GIA also went on to argue that many Algerians themselves were corrupted by their own history and that it was legitimate to eliminate such corruption because they were apostate. The group’s activities degenerated into apparently mindless violence and a series of horrific massacres in 1997 and 1998, notable for a complete failure on the part of the authorities to intervene and for intense suspicions that there had been official complicity in some of these incidents – both to discredit the Islamist opposition and for reasons of personal gain. This pattern of activity now seems to be repeating itself, for the latest massacres have no obvious purpose except to inculcate fear or form part of some arcane feud within the regime that is played out through the GIA which, as described below, is severely infiltrated by the security forces.

The original justification for this lay in the generalised ideology adopted by the extremist mujahidin in Afghanistan and is closely linked to the concept of jhad – usually understood to mean “holy war”. In fact, the word comes from the Arabic verb “to strive” and in its original meaning reflected the striving for inner purification. A subsidiary meaning also meant the strive, first to extend the world of Islam – the dar al-Islam – and, secondly, to defend it. In its original meaning of striving, it is also linked to the concept of ijtihad , the

I, the undersigned, Mohamed-Larbi Zitout, formerly of Algeria but now residing at 350 Edgwere Road, London, solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm the following:

1. The content of this testimony on behalf of Mr Ahmed Zaoui is true to the best of my knowledge.

2. I came to the United Kingdom in September 1995 and was granted refugee status thereafter. I had previously been the Deputy Ambassador of the Algerian Embassy in Tripoli (Libya) until August 1995. I left the diplomatic service and sought political asylum in Britain because I could not reconcile my role as diplomat serving my country with the putschist generals’ objective of using all resources of the Algerian state to destroy democracy and a significant proportion of the Algerian population

3. I should state from the outset that I do not hold the same politico-religious views as Mr. Ahmed Zaoui, although I do share his opposition to the military regime in Algiers. When I first came to the UK, I gave interviews to newspapers stating, on the basis of insider knowledge, that the Algerian government – specifically the generals – ìle pouvoirî, was involved in the massacre of civilians, meaning that it was killing its own people. I further pointed out that the military regime had agents who had infiltrated the GIA (Groups Islamique ArmÈ–Armed Islamic Group).

4. A large number of subsequent defecting officers and human rights organizations have corroborated my statements, which have now become common knowledge.

5. I first came into contact with Mr Ahmed Zaoui in the summer of 1997 while I was on holiday in Brussels where my two brothers live. I wish to quote exactly what I said about him in my interview with the Swiss newspaper 24 Heures published on 28 December 1997 in response to the questions of the journalist probing my opinion of Mr. Ahmed Zaoui. I stated:

ìI met him three or four times during last summer holidays at Brussels. When one talks to him one realizes that extent to which the propaganda of the generals, through its embassies and press, has succeeded in demonizing their political opponents, especially the Islamists. I know that Mr Zaoui belongs to a Muslim nationalist political trend known as ‘Algerianism’. This political trend is very well known in Algeria for its moderation and pragmatism, and for the intellectual sophistication of its members. I do not believe that he has any links with terrorism. One has to be cautions about the disinformation activities of the Algerian secret police and services, which targets even the French and Belgian secret services. There are too many economic interests at stake and Charles Pasqua’s policy of demonizing Islamists is not dead yet, even if there has been a beginning of a change recently.î

6. I am aware that Mr. Zaoui has been condemned to death by a special court in Algeria. These special courts are in fact courts operating within a legal framework copied literally from the legal Code of the French Special Courts under Nazi Germany (the Vichy regime). I am also aware that a special court in Algeria condemned Mr. Zaoui to death in 1994, on charges of the creation of and belonging to a terrorist group. Such charges are in my view entirely baseless.

7. In my view, should Mr. Zaoui be returned to Algeria, the Generals would definitely have him tortured savagely to extract every scrap of information from him possible. They would then have him executed.

8. The accusation made by the Algerian regime and backed by France, that Mr Zaoui is the “Head of the GIA in Europe”, is also baseless. No proof has ever been offered of this, nor is there likely to be any since, to our knowledge, Mr. Zaoui has never been a member of the GIA, let alone in a leadership position in that group. Moreover, Mr. Zaoui is in fact one of those on the list of 8 leading FIS members convicted to death by the GIA. The first in the list, Sheikh Sahraoui, was killed in Paris in July 1995.

9. As to allegations against Mr Zaoui coming from the El Watan newspaper, I wish to state that the El Watan newspaper is widely recognised as the voice of the regime and is known to be closely associated with the DRS (Algerian security services). In fact there is no attempt to hide this relationship. It was the El Watan that called for the military to topple the President in 1992 and cancel the results of Algeria’s first democratic elections. It believes that the ìAlgerian Republic must be ’saved’ by any means necessary legal or illegalî. In this light, it is not surprising that El Watan has attempted to demonise Mr. Zaoui via these allegations.

10. I am aware of the criminal charges and convictions against Mr Zaoui in Belgium in 1995 and in France in 2001. The problem for Belgium, but also for Switzerland, is the constant pressure from the French Government to incriminate members of the Algerian opposition, among them Mr. Zaoui. Mr. Zaoui was jailed in Belgium and when he fled to Switzerland, he was deported to Burkina Faso few months later. The very same fate, incidentally, was shared by a group of other so-called ìIslamistsî deported from France in 1994.

11. On a more general note about France and its relationship with the Algerian military regime, I wish to repeat the statement I made in to the Parliamentary hearing on human rights in the House of Commons (London) on the 19th of February 1998:
ìFrance does have a sizeable share of responsibility in this on-rushing of massive violence in this tragic state of human devastation and despair. There is ample evidence that France not only helped the generals carry out the military coup but it has since then, been heavily involved in providing unconditional political, diplomatic, military, financial and media support to the regime. France is allied with the military faction known as Les Eradicateurs who are most bitterly opposed to a negotiated political solution.î

12. Regarding the view that the Algerian regime takes towards Mr Zaoui, Mr. Zaoui is one of the leading figures of Algerian Islamism, belonging to a nationalist political trend known as Algerianism. This political trend is very well known in Algeria for its moderation and pragmatism, as well as the highly intellectual nature of its members. Mr. Zaoui for example, is an Imam and a professor. These factors, as well as his popularity and ability as an orator, make Mr. Zaoui, as a strongly convicted opponent of the regime, a threat to the Generals.

13. I have read the conclusions reached by Professor George Joffe in his report on Mr Zaoui. Professor Joffe is one of the best Algerian specialists in the United Kingdom and, for that matter, in the west generally. I completely support Professor Joffe’s conclusion on the injustices and misrepresentations that Mr. Zaoui has suffered and their broader context. One point that I believe that Professor Joffe has omitted, however, is the role of France in defending and supporting the Algerian regime and in demonising all of its opponents (Islamist or secular) more zealously than the regime itself, or as a French proverb would put it, more ìRoyaliste que le roi.î

14. I fully support Ahmed Zaoui’s appeal for refugee status in New Zealand.

Affirmed this day of 2003

Mohamed-Larbi Zitout

Before Me:

[person authorized to witness Affidavits]