Hit list to lengthen?

Algeria Interface, December 7, 1999

The roll call of assassinations in Algeria between 1993 and 1997 made for grim reading. There are now fears that the recent killing of Abdelkader Hachani will usher in a fresh wave.

Algiers, 7/12/99 – The killing of Abdelkader Hashani, the FIS number three, on June 29 and rumours of a hit list have prompted fears of a chilling return to a period all Algerians had hoped was over – a four-year spate of politically motivated killings in the early and mid-1990s.

It was with shooting in 1992 of President Boudiaf, one of the chief architects of the Algerian Revolution, that the political killings began. Convicted of the murder after a controversial trial, Lieutenant Lembarek Boumaarafi of the anti-terrorist Special Intervention Unit (GIS) – commanded by the powerful General Smaïn Lamari – is still waiting to serve his death sentence in a military prison in the province of Blida.

Not so the general secretary of the independent Algerian Human Rights League (LADH) lawyer Youcef Fethallah who investigated Boudiaf's assassination. He was gunned down at his office in the heart of Algiers on June 18 1994.

The fiercely anti-Islamic Hafid Senhadri was shot dead on March 14, the first killing in 1993, the most murderous year of all. A member of the Algerian National Salvation Committee (CNSA), he had called for and defended the cancelling of elections in January 1992.

Killings across the political spectrum
His death was followed by those of parliamentarian and academic Djillali Liabès, Dr. Laadi Flici, writer Tahar Djaout, psychiatrist Mahfoud Boucebci who was a member of the Tahar Djaout Truth Committee, academic and researcher M'hamed Boukhobza and Mohamed Bouslimani, president of a charity close to Hamas. All were shot by unidentified gunmen.

Another prominent victim in 1993 was ex-prime minister, Kasdi Merbah. Former head of the Algerian intelligence service, he founded and led the Movement for Justice and Democracy in Algeria. On August 21 he was caught in a carefully engineered ambush near his secondary residence at Bordj El Bahri while on his way to an appointment.

His widow publicly accused one of his former secret service colleagues, Kaci Abdallah, of master-minding the killing until he, too, met his death at the hands of a commando unit, also in the Bordj El Bahri area. At the time he sat in the interim government, known as the National Transition Council (CNT). Sources close to Abdallah claimed the killers were seeking to obtain documents about Kasdi Merbah. Other members of the CNT were to suffer the same fate in coming months.

Neither government ministers, diplomats, local officials or trades unionists were spared.

Former Interior Minister, Aboubakr Belkaid, was assassinated in September 1995. He was followed two months later by General Mohamed Boutighane, while Belkaid's successor in the Interior Ministry was shot in May 1996. Abdelhak Benhamouda, leader of the trade union UGTA, was murdered on January 29 1997. The suspect charged with his murder was to die a mysterious death only a few weeks later.

Leading politicians like Gasmi of the FLN, Rabah Stambouli of the Rally for Culture and Democracy, Djaballah of the communist Ettahadi Movement and Mebarek Mahiou of the Socialist Forces Front were among the party leaders to lose their lives in successive waves of carefully targeted killings from 1993 to 1996. Hundreds of lives were lost.

Islamic militants pay the heaviest toll
No single organisation was to pay a heavier than the outlawed FIS, however. It lost thousands of activists to political killings.

Of the FIS's top brass, Abdelbaki Sahraoui was assassinated on July 12, 1995, near a Paris mosque only a few months after Algeria's main opposition parties had hammered out a joint political platform. Then, one year later, a charismatic Islamist figure, the 89-year old imam, Sheikh Ahmed Sahnoun, was shot and wounded in an Algiers mosque.

No group has ever claimed responsibility, just as nobody claims to have been behind the killing of Abdelkader Hashani on November 22. The authorities usually ascribe killings to armed Islamic groups.

With the resurgence of violence in recent weeks and no end in sight to the current impasse, many Algerians fear that the assassination roll call is again set to lengthen.

Algeria Interface