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.

Algeria said this case has reached the “limits of the inadmissible and intolerable”.

The former minister, who is now 85, is suspected of having approved and coordinated torture during the Algerian civil war in the 1990s.

On Tuesday, the OAG in Bern announced that it had indicted Nezzar before the Federal Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is accused of having placed confidants in key positions and knowingly and willingly created structures aimed at destroying the Islamist opposition.

Phone call with Cassis

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”.

+Swiss court rules Algerian minister can be investigated

Civil war with 200,000 casualties

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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