Open Letter to Tony Blair concerning visit of Algerian president to the UK

Dear Prime Minister,

We, the undersigned, protest in the strongest terms to your government's decision to officially welcome Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to the United Kingdom this week.

Since coming to power in 1997, your Government has prided itself on promoting human rights and democratisation across the world, declaring its desire to "put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy". Rather than promoting the ideals of freedom and democracy you say you cherish, the current relationship between Britain and Algeria further illustrates, alongside punitive anti-terror laws, the relegation of the human rights agenda under New Labour.

President Bouteflika's administration is a dictatorship with the facade of being a democracy, serving as a cover for the Algerian army generals' firm grasp on the control of the state. At the end of 1991, the Islamic Salvation Front, known as FIS, swept to an overwhelming victory in the first round of Algeria’s first and only fair parliamentary elections, promising an end to the military-backed government, and its rampant corruption. With their substantial interests threatened the military responded with a coup d’Etat: FIS activists and leaders were arrested by their thousands and transported to concentration camps in the Sahara, a state of emergency (still ongoing) was declared, the president was deposed, and the elections were cancelled.

The resulting civil war claimed the lives of over 200,000 people (as Bouteflika recently acknowledged), more than fifteen thousand were “disappeared”, nearly two million were internally displaced, and another 1 million people exiled (among them, over than 50 thousand to the UK).

Like you, Prime Minister, President Bouteflika is also concerned about the length of his term in office. Unlike you, he is not planning to go anytime soon, organising a referendum to change the constitution on ending limits to the number of terms he can 'run' as president.

Algeria's human rights record is appalling. Although President Bouteflika has been praised as peacemaker by the West, his Charter for Peace and Reconciliation, codified in February 2006, has been criticised by human rights groups as a shame. Under the agreement military personnel implicated in serious crimes enjoy what amounts to an unconditional amnesty (article 45), hailed as patriots who "helped save Algeria". It is a cynical ploy to stifle investigations into the sinister role played by the government security forces in 'disappearances', civilian massacres such as the one at Bentalha in 1998, and even the Paris metro bombing of 1995, all previously blamed squarely on Islamic militants.

This has major implications for bilateral ties including the Memorandum of Understanding initialled by the two countries in June 2006, allowing the UK to circumvent international laws on torture and return suspected Algerian 'terrorists' for interrogation in return for assurances to the UK government that Algeria will not torture any detainees handed over to them. Despite more than a year of negotiations between your government and Algeria, Prime Minister, you have not managed to get a single piece of paper guaranteeing Algeria's commitment to its part of the bargain. In any case, Amnesty International's documentation of cases of torture techniques like 'chiffon' (choking the victim), and the barring of inspections of high security prisons and detention centres, makes any assurances to the UK completely groundless.

We demand that you look beyond the opportunity to benefit from the oil and gas resources of Algeria, noted in the Foreign Office's country profile report as "important in the context of UK's energy … strategy", and instead demand that you take this opportunity to issue a new Memorandum of Understanding, one that makes clear that the UK will have no relationship with Algeria until it has carried as a minimum requirement, the following actions and reforms: -

Stop torture, arbitrary detention and extra judicial killings; -

Hold fully accountable those who have committed gross human rights violations in Algeria; -

End the government pressure on the press and restrictions on the right of freedom of association; -

Terminate the state of emergency; -

The immediate organisation of free and fair elections under the scrutiny of international observers.

Mohamed Larbi Zitout, former Algerian Deputy Ambassador (Libya, 91-95), Spokesperson for Al-Karama, Abdallah Anass, representative of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), Mohamed Denideni, Algerian journalist and political dissident, Jamal Lazibi, member of the FIS, Yvonne Ridley, Journalist and patron of Stop Political Terror, Ann Gray, CAMPACC, Adnan Siddiqui, Cageprisoners, Saghir Hussain, Human Right Lawyer

Press Contact

Mohamed Larbi Zitout

Al-Karama (For Human Rights in the Arab world) 95 Praed Street, London W2 1NT Tel. 0207 4020500 Mobile. 07939 028 027