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Only truth will stabilize Algeria-rights activist http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-08-20T183758Z_01_L20858687_RTRUKOC_0_US-ALGERIA-AMNESTY.xml
Sun Aug 20, 2006
By William Maclean
BLIDA, Algeria (Reuters) - Algeria, emerging from years of conflict, will not find lasting peace from an amnesty ending this month because Islamist killers won immunity without having to reveal what they did, a human rights activist said.
Cherifa Kheddar, who heads a charity campaigning for justice for the bereaved, added in a Reuters interview that Islamist insurgents freed or given immunity under the process had behaved like victors, making national reconciliation very difficult.
"Why must we accept it if we do not know why our loved ones were killed?" Kheddar, whose brother and sister were tortured to death by Islamist rebels in 1996, said on Saturday. "Hiding the truth is not a good strategy for establishing a durable peace."
"The victims left children and families, and one day or another the children will ask the authorities why the state did not ensure the security of these people, why didn't the authorities asked questions about the crime itself and why didn't the whole truth about what happened ever come out."
More than 2,000 Islamist ex-fighters have been freed under the amnesty in a test of the government's push to reconcile people in the north African oil-producing nation whose stability is seen as crucial for the security of the Mediterranean region.
The amnesty, which started on Feb 28, gave guerrillas still fighting six months to surrender and be pardoned provided they had not committed massacres, rapes and bombings of public places.
It also bars prosecutions of members of the security forces for any wrongdoing committed during the conflict that killed 150,000 to 200,000 people, mostly civilians, and bars public criticism of any participant in the conflict for their actions.
The conflict began when the authorities canceled 1992 elections which an Islamist party was poised to win.
VICTORS
Tens of thousands of Algerians answered a call for a holy war to overthrow the state. They attacked citizens and soldiers to sow fear. Some groups specialized in killing intellectuals. Some killed women and girls for not wearing the veil.
Several former rebel leaders have said since their release they would still like an Islamic state and at least one has suggested that violence will not end until one is established.
Kheddar said she had seen no sign of repentance. "The victims of terrorism ... will never admit that a terrorist is seen as the equal of a victim, or the brother of a victim or the sister of a victim," she said.
"If during this amnesty the killers had shown any sign of repentance we would have been able to change our position, but as yet we have not yet met a terrorist who has shown this.
"Instead they presented themselves like victors in front of the victims. They have not repented. They have not asked forgiveness of the Algerian people or of their victims."
Kheddar has long proposed a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission, dismissing the argument of Algerian leaders that the country could not withstand the strains unleashed by a full accounting of the violence.
"Installing a truth commission would be very, very difficult at the moment but if there is political will ... it could work," she said. "Victims can sometimes be comforted by knowing why this person was targeted and killed and in what circumstances."
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