Algeria, numerous cases of torture in courts but no measures have been taken
They were active during the 90s, when they were young officers acting under the orders of Major Djebbar Mehenna (now Major General), who ran the Centre Principal Militaire des Investigations (CPMI) at Benaknoun (on the outskirts of Algiers).
At this center, in addition to torturing innocent detainees, the officers assigned to the "death squad" executed their victims in cold blood. Having found no evidence of guilt against the defendants, they ended up shooting them in the head. The executors received substantial bonuses ranging from 150,000 Dinars (€1,030) to 250,000 DA (the equivalent of €1,700), according to their colleague, Staff Sergeant Houari, whose testimony is broadcast on YouTube.
Spain the Eldorado for Algerian secret service criminals
In the 90s, this sum was a fortune for an Algerian. According to the same witness, "each death squad officer executed up to ten people a day, sometimes more. Sometimes more." This enabled them to have fat accounts in Spain and to acquire sumptuous villas on Iberian soil.
These officers, promoted to the ranks of colonel and general, are now at the head of the Algerian secret services. Djebbar Mehenna, a major-general, is in charge of the General Directorate of Documentation and External Security (DGDSE). His second-in-command is one of the former residents of the Benaknoun CPMI, Colonel Souahi Zerguine alias Mouad and Hocine Oubelaïd alias Hocine Boulahia.
The latter, entangled in a nasty affair which was the subject of a trial taking place at the military tribunal, was withdrawn to his native village of Larba Nath Iraten (Kabylia) and issued with an ISTN (Interdiction de Sortie du Territoire National).
At the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI), Abdelkader Haddad, promoted to the rank of general in 2021, has been appointed head of the Centre Principal Opérationnel (moved from Hydra to Benaknoun) known as the "Antar center" since 2023. A barracks that has become the obligatory stop-off point for all those arrested, whether civilian or military. Many generals sent to the Blida military prison passed through here.
The man who boasts of having sent hundreds of Algerians underground makes even the bravest of inmates tremble. The mere mention of his name is synonymous with abuse, punishment and death. According to victims who have been there, "in this center, no means are spared to physically break their prey. They have no fear of seeing their victims die under torture. They are fully insured.
Few people dare to talk about the abuse they suffered in this sinister center. They are traumatized for life. Especially when you know that in Algeria, you get nothing if you file a complaint against the torturers. No court, civilian or military, will accept your complaint. Some victims have dared to shout out in court that they have been tortured. Not the slightest reaction from the magistrates.
Young student sexually assaulted at Antar barracks
Walid Nekkiche, 25, a student at the Institut supérieur des sciences de le mer et de l'aménagement de territoire had been arrested on November 26, 2019 in Algiers during a weekly march by students of the "Hirak", the anti-regime protest movement born in February 2019.
"I've been through hell," he blurts out before the judges on the day of his trial at the Dar-El-Beïda court on the outskirts of Algiers on February 2, 2021, at the end of 14 months in pre-trial detention. "I endured a lot during those fourteen months in prison, especially the six days I spent in the Ben Aknoun barracks", he adds, continuing "I was sexually, physically and verbally assaulted by elements of the security services while in police custody".
By announcing to the audience that he had been raped and sodomized by members of the security services, the magistrates showed incredible passivity. Not the slightest emotion or reaction. Quite the contrary, in fact. With chilling cynicism, the public prosecutor shamefully demanded life imprisonment.
The young student's statements sparked a wave of indignation in working-class circles. They prompted comment in some media. This prompted the public prosecutor's office to open an investigation, without the slightest chance of success. Naturally, the case was closed as soon as it was opened.
Extradited from Spain, ex-gendarme Benhlima recounts his ordeal
Another victim who defied his torturers and their protectors was the deserter gendarme who took refuge in Spain for some time before being extradited and handed over to the Algerian authorities who came to collect him by special plane.
Mohammed Azzouz Benhalima", who has been brought before the courts on several occasions for various offences with the aim of implicating defendants he never knew, recounted at length, for the third time, what he has endured since being handed over by Spain to the Algerian security services. He recounted his ordeal, the endless torture sessions, and confessed to having been raped," reports the Comité National pour la Libération des Détenus (CNLD) on its Facebook page.
Benhalima exonerates all the defendants in this case, declaring that they were inspired by the security services and under threat. He called on the judge to reaffirm that his confessions were made under torture and under the effect of what he was given to drink.
He recounts his ordeal in prison, in isolation, without the right to visit or receive food. He was even forbidden to wear clothes, so he appeared before the judge in a torn woollen sweater and musty tracksuit.
He confronted the judge with his truths, claiming that the "dehdouhettes" broadcast on ENTV were made under dictation and the threat of rape. The "dehdouhettes" are confessions recorded by police officers or DGSI agents, in front of the cameras and broadcast on all TV channels, public and private.
In these confessions, the accused assumes responsibility for all the acts of which he or she is accused. He tells a story in which he accuses all the people the security services want to implicate, without ever having met them. The poorly written scenarios staged and broadcast in public reveal the intellectual level of the accused.
Here, too, the judges remained unperturbed as they listened to the victim recount his ordeal.
Adel Abdelmalek told to keep quiet about torture
At the Constantine military court on February 2, former gendarme Adel Abdelmalek, who had been kidnapped by elements of the DGSI as he left the Tébessa courthouse, did not beat about the bush.
From the very first exchanges with the president of the court, he began to recount the nightmare he had lived through during his disappearance from the DGSI premises. Reported missing for over a fortnight, Adel Abdelmalek was subjected to all kinds of torture. Yet they had nothing to take away from his confession.
Adel Abdelmalek was a gendarme in a gendarmerie brigade in a place that looks like the end of the world. He never showed any indiscipline or committed the slightest infraction. Until one day, when he was arrested for a month for "failing to warn that he was the brother of journalist Anouar Malek, who denounces the exactions of the Algerian regime from abroad".
A few months later, he was dismissed from the national gendarmerie. This was followed by his arrest in July 2023, his release under judicial supervision and his abduction by elements of the DGSI. Everything came to a head for this young gendarme, aged 36, who was leading a peaceful life before plunging into hell.
When he declared at the hearing that he had been subjected to the most abject torture, the president of the court quickly interrupted him and ordered him to keep quiet. The trial was quickly over in thirty minutes, and the gendarme was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
As he left the courtroom, the guards charged with escorting him to his cell, according to eyewitnesses, rushed at him mercilessly, beating him to a pulp. The beating was followed by a severe torture session.
The prison guards who greeted him did not recognize the young man they had seen on their way to court that morning. He was so beaten up. "His hair was torn out. His face was swollen and covered in blood. He could hardly walk back to his cell," says a guard, moved by what he had just seen.
Other victims suffered the same fate, if not worse: they were unable to make their voices heard, even though they had appeared before the courts in the most appalling condition. Such is the case of the former secretary to the late General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, former Army Chief of Staff and Deputy Minister of National Defense.
After fleeing to Turkey, where he had sought asylum, Guermit Bounouira was extradited to Algeria, where he was sentenced to death by the military court after a summary trial. A sentence he would have liked to see carried out to free him from the atrocity of the torture he continues to endure on a daily basis.
In a way, this is the fate of hundreds of Algerians arrested for "offences of opinion". Yes, in Algeria, the expression of an opinion is a crime that leads to the sinister torture facilities under the command of the army, whose boss is none other than General Saïd Chengriha.