“By act of 28.08.2023, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Confederation refers the former Algerian Minister of National Defense and member of the High State Committee Khaled Nezzar to the Federal Criminal Court for violations of international humanitarian law within the meaning of the Geneva Conventions between 1992 and 1994 in the context of the civil war in Algeria and for crimes against humanity. In particular, the defendant is suspected of having, to say the least, knowingly and deliberately approved, coordinated and encouraged torture and other cruel, inhuman or humiliating acts, violations of physical and mental integrity, arbitrary detentions and convictions as well as extrajudicial executions,” reads a statement from the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Swiss Confederation, made public this Tuesday, August 29.
Being on the verge of death, it is a safe bet that General Nezzar will never be at the helm of a Swiss or other court. But, for Algerians in general and the complainants, in particular, it is a moral victory against one of the executioners of the Algerian people. This decision will undoubtedly encourage the filing of other complaints against generals, still active, who have coldly executed thousands of Algerians listed today as missing. A list that includes no less than 20,000 people according to human rights organizations. But, the power in place recognizes its responsibility only on half of this number. As if 10,000 missing is a paltry number.
A case that has been going on since 2011
It was on denunciation of the non-governmental organization TRIAL International, that the Confederate Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPC) opened in October 2011 a criminal procedure against Khaled Nezzar then residing in Switzerland for presumption of war crimes within the meaning of articles 108 and 109 of the Military Penal Code of June 13, 1927 (aCPM) committed during the civil war in Algeria. General Nezzar installed at the Beau Rivage hotel in Geneva, accompanied by his eldest daughter to whom he planned to buy a house for the tidy sum of 400,000 FCH, was surprised by the federal police who came to arrest him and led to the prosecutor’s office. He will spend four days in police custody before being released with the promise to respond to summonses from the Swiss justice system at all times.
A long investigation procedure then begins, which will end in 2017 with the dismissal of the case on the grounds that the Algerian civil war did not constitute an internal armed conflict within the meaning of the law and that Switzerland, consequently, was not competent to judge possible war crimes in this context. On appeal, the Federal Criminal Court, however, found that “the clashes had presented such an intensity of violence that they were akin to the notion of armed conflict as defined by Art. 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and topical international jurisprudence. “In addition, the Court of Complaints judged the armed opposition sufficiently organized to be considered as an armed grouping within the meaning of the said Conventions. The Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Confederation thus resumed the criminal procedure in 2018. After hearing from a total of 24 people, he filed an indictment.
For the plaintiffs, the case lasted too long and the Swiss justice system dragged its feet just so as not to inconvenience the Algerian authorities who had taken up the cause for the former minister of National defense by insuring him the travel expenses of a hundred witnesses, all former barons of the regime, and the expenses of three tenor lawyers of the Geneva bar.
And if, today, we learn of the general’s referral to a criminal court, “it’s still better than what France did in April 2001 when it allowed Nezzar to leave French territory before being arrested following a complaint filed by four of his former victims” sighs one of the complainants
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