Algeria: Accused of crimes against humanity, General Khaled Nezzar goes on trial next June in Switzerland

On August 28, 2023, the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Swiss Confederation sent the Federal Criminal Court (TPF) an indictment against Algerian general Khaled Nezzar. The charges against the former Algerian general are serious: they allege war crimes in the form of torture, inhuman treatment, arbitrary detentions and sentences, as well as crimes against humanity in the form of assassinations, which took place between January 1992 and January 1994, during the first years of the civil war.

This is the culmination of a process that has taken an inordinately long time. Nearly a dozen years. The proceedings began on October 20, 2011, when Algerian general Khaled Nezzar was arrested at Geneva's Hotel Beau Rivage by the police following a criminal denunciation by TRIAL International and complaints from two victims of torture during the black decade.

Interrogated for 48 hours by the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office (MPC), he was released on condition that he be present for the rest of the investigation. In January 2012, General Nezzar lodged an appeal against the proceedings against him, arguing that "his position as Minister of Defense at the time of the events protected him from possible criminal prosecution in Switzerland". 

The appeal was rejected by the Federal Court, which ruled that "it is not possible to invoke immunity for international crimes (war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide)".

The case dragged on, and it wasn't until August 2014 that the Public Prosecutor's Office (MPC) of the Swiss Confederation decided to send a draft international rogatory commission to the Federal Office of Justice, but it wasn't forwarded to the Algerian authorities until April 7, 2015. 

In November 2016, the MPC again heard General Khaled Nezzar and confronted him with two of the five complainants, Abdelwahab Boukezouha and Seddik Daadi. Daadi eventually withdrew his complaint and was returned by the Algerian secret services. 

To make the proceedings even slower, General Nezzar registered 105 witnesses on his behalf, including retired colonel Belkacem Boukhari, the former public prosecutor of the Blida military court, Ali Haroun and Leïla Aslaoui, two former ministers.

In January 2017, the MPC dismissed the case on the grounds that "there was no civil war in Algeria during the period for which the former Minister of National Defense is being prosecuted". The civil parties immediately lodged an appeal against this decision. They were successful.

The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office (MPC) held Khaled Nezzar's final hearing over three days. From February 2 to 4, 2022. It found that "numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed while Mr. Nezzar was leading the military junta and serving as Minister of Defense at the start of the Algerian civil war".

A year and a half later, on August 28, 2023, Swiss justice announced the indictment and referral to the Federal Criminal Court of Khaled Nezzar, former Minister of Defense and former strongman of the Algerian regime in the early 1990s. This has not failed to provoke a reaction from the leaders of "New Algeria".

"This affair has reached the limits of the inadmissible and intolerable. The Algerian government is determined to draw all the consequences, including those that are far from desirable for the future of Algerian-Swiss relations", thundered Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf in a telephone interview with his Swiss counterpart Ignazio Cassis, two days after the announcement by the Swiss MPC. The protest went unheeded.

All that remained was to set a date for the trial of the old general, who has been on death's door for several days. Yesterday, the news broke. The trial will be held in Bern from June 14 to 17, 2024. In other words, we'll have to wait another six months for justice to be rendered to the victims of General Nezzar's crimes. 

Will the accused survive until the date of his trial? There is reason to doubt it. He is 87 years old and seriously ill, so ill that doctors at the Aïn-Naadja military hospital in Algiers have sent him home with no hope of recovery. "He's wishing for death, he's in so much pain," confides one of his close friends. 

So, if by June 2024 Khaled Nezzar is no longer with us, there will obviously be no trial. Nevertheless, Algerians, and particularly the victims, would have the satisfaction of having given the former regime strongman a hard time through a procedure that gave him a fright at some of its stages. 

It will also give a fright to certain generals, still in office, who committed crimes during the same period. These include General Abdelkader Hadda, alias Nacer El-Djenn, the current head of the operational center of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI), and General Hamid Oubelaïd, alias Hocine Boulahia, head of the analysis and research department of the General Directorate of Documentation and External Security (DGDSE) and General Abdelkader Aït-Ouarabi, alias General Hassan, accused by a former non-commissioned officer, who worked under them, of the cold-blooded execution of dozens of Algerians in a barracks on the outskirts of Algiers. 

General Saïd Chengriha, the current army chief of staff and regime strongman, accused by a former officer and author of "La salle guerre", published by "La découverte" in 2001, of having "shot dead a citizen in the town of Lakhdaria (60 km east of Algiers) in 1993 during a midnight search of his home". 

General Djebbar Mehenna, the current head of the DGDSE, is also on the list of alleged war criminals. He is accused of having thrown citizens accused of terrorism during the bloody decade from helicopters. He is also accused of having injected olive oil into the veins of people arrested as part of the so-called "fight against terrorism".

Be that as it may, the proceedings launched against General Khaled Nezzar and the charge of crimes against humanity and war crimes brought against him are a black mark on the history of the Algerian regime, which already has dozens of predators languishing in prison for economic crimes (embezzlement of public funds, illicit enrichment, abuse of office, money laundering, capital flight, etc.).

Now it's the turn of those who have committed crimes against humanity (torture, extra-judicial executions, kidnappings, etc.), to answer to the law.