The Algerian interior minister on Monday denied allegations of human rights abuses contained in a United States State Department report and advised Washington to ”sweep its own doorstep”, referring to the prison at Guantánamo Bay.
The annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, issued last week, raises several concerns in its section on Algeria, ranging from allegations of torture to poor prison conditions and restrictions on the press.
It is not the first time the State Department has included such criticism in its annual report, echoing comments by international human rights groups. The virulent reaction came at a time of high sensitivity in this North African nation, with presidential elections scheduled for April 9.
”We categorically deny the bulk of the negative elements in this report,” Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni told reporters after the opening of the spring parliamentary session.
”People should sweep their own doorstep,” Zerhouni said. ”Americans should be telling us about what is going on at Guantánamo prison.”
At least nine Algerian nationals have been released from the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, where hundreds have been held without trial as alleged enemy combatants in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
Reports and photographs of abuse or torture at Guantánamo, or at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, have badly damaged the US’s reputation in much of the Arab and Muslim world. President Barack Obama has vowed to close Guantánamo.
And some Arab countries, and several human rights groups, have complained of difficult access to Guantánamo prisoners.
Zerhouni said Algerian prisons, in contrast, were accessible. ”All our prisons have been open to human rights organisations, which have come out convinced that Algeria is a country that respects the law,” he said.
Despite the public criticism, Algeria works closely with US services on security matters.
Zerhouni said the American report also contained ”lots of positive elements on Algeria”.
He did not specify which, but the report says, for instance, that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Red Crescent and the United Nations Development Programme were allowed to visit some prisons in 2008.
Inmates in facilities run by Algeria’s Justice Ministry were found to be held ”in accordance with ICRC standard practices”, the report said.
However, ”the government denied other human rights observers visits to military and high-security prisons and detention centres”, the report added.
It blamed al-Qaeda-linked terror groups for most of the attacks and bombings that have killed hundreds of people in Algeria, but said a state of emergency — in vigour since 1992 — was ”restricting some liberties.”
In other criticism, the State Department pointed to ”reports of abuse and torture, official impunity, abuse of pretrial detention, poor prison conditions, limited judicial independence” in Algeria in 2008.
The State Department also deplored ”increased limitations of religious freedom”, as well as ”corruption and lack of government transparency”, and ”restrictions on freedom of speech, press and assembly”. — Sapa-AP