The Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office has charged former Algerian Defense Minister Khaled Nezzar, 85, with violating international humanitarian law by authorizing and directing torture in the 1990s, according to a report by Swiss French-language daily 24heures.
Nezzar, who led the army and the intelligence during the 1990s, also called The Black Decade, is accused of authorizing, coordinating, and encouraging torture and other “cruel, inhuman, or humiliating acts,” arbitrary detentions and convictions, and extrajudicial executions, according to a press release issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (MPC) on Tuesday.
According to the indictment, Nezzar, as Minister of Defense and member of the High State Committee in Algeria, placed people of trust in key positions and knowingly and deliberately created structures aimed at exterminating the Islamist opposition. There is evidence of war crimes, as well as extensive and systematic persecution of civilians accused of sympathizing with the resistance.
The MPC specifically noted eleven events occurring between 1992 and 1994. Waterboarding, electroshock therapy, and other cruel, harsh, or degrading treatment, as well as abuses of their bodily and mental integrity, were allegedly inflicted on the victims.
The prosecution has outlined how Nezzar knew and deliberately approved, organized, or commanded the above-mentioned abuses. During the main sessions before the Federal Criminal Court (TPF) in Bellinzona, the MPC will present its conclusions. The MPC also specified that Nezzar will receive the right to the presumption of innocence, in accordance with the Swiss Constitution, until the final judgment is delivered.
Khaled Nezzar was detained on a visit to Geneva in 2011 following a complaint filed by torture victims and the NGO Trial International. The MPC then decided to launch a criminal investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The MPC closed the case in 2017 on the basis that Algeria had no armed conflict in the early 1990s. The TPF published a decision in 2018 to overturn the MPC’s rejection of the case, requiring the MPC to reopen the inquiry. Between 1992 and 2000, 200,000 individuals died or went missing in Algeria, according to Trial International.