Algeria criticises Switzerland for indicting former Defence Minister
The former minister, who is now 85, is suspected of having approved and coordinated torture during the Algerian civil war in the 1990s.
Keystone / Amel Pain
Algeria has criticised the indictment of its former Defence Minister Khaled Nezzar by Switzerland’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG) for crimes against humanity.
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العربية
ar
الجزائر تنتقد سويسرا لاتّهامها وزيرَ دفاعها السابق بارتكاب جرائم حرب
In a phone conversation with his counterpart, Ignazio Cassis, on Thursday, Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf expressed the view that “the independence of the judiciary does not justify irresponsibility and that any judicial system whatsoever arrogates to itself the absolute right to judge the policies of a sovereign and independent state”.
Attaf said he hoped that “everything possible would be done to prevent this case from leading relations between Algeria and Switzerland down the path of the undesirable and irreparable”.
Algeria experienced a civil war in the 1990s after the military interrupted parliamentary elections that promised victory to the Islamists of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). According to official estimates, around 200,000 people lost their lives in this conflict.
Nezzar was arrested in Geneva in October 2011, when he was living in Switzerland, following a complaint by a Swiss NGO. He was later released and left Switzerland.
In 2017, the OAG closed the case on the grounds that there was no armed conflict in Algeria in the early 1990s. In 2018, the Federal Criminal Court announced its decision to overturn the closure of the case and the OAG reopened the investigation.
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