Algerian Regime Responsible for
Massacres
Algeria regime 'was behind Paris bombs'
By John Sweeney and Leonard Doyle
Manchester Guardian Weekly, November 16, 1997
BOMBS in Paris, help for Saddam Hussein's programme to
produce weapons of mass destruction, the regime of terror at home -- today
Algeria's secret police state is indicted by one of its own members or crimes
against humanity.
"Yussuf-Joseph" was a career secret agent in Algeria's securite militaire
until he defected to Britain, bringing with him the deepest secrets of the
regime's links with President Saddam. His wife an children were spirited out.
Two and a half years later they are still waiting for political asylum. "Joseph"
spent 14 years as part of the Algerian police state. In one gulag torture
chamber he saw "a human eye lying on a table, and in the eye a fork". He now
risks assassination for speaking out publicly.
He said: "The bombs that outraged Paris in 1995 -- blamed on Muslim fanatics
-- were the handiwork of the Algerian secret service. They were part of a
propaganda war aimed at galvanising French public opinion against the
Islamists."
The Algerian police state is hiding material for President Saddam's nuclear,
chemical and biological warfare programme. Intelligence agents from the two
countries are collaborating to defeat the United Nations sanctions against Iraq.
The relentless massacres in Algeria are the work of secret police and army death
squads.
Algerian intelligence agents routinely bribe European police, journalists and
MPs. Joseph said he paid one French MP, who cannot be named for legal reasons,
more than 500,000 francs (about $90,000) in bribes.
The killing of many foreigners was organised by the secret police, not
Islamic extremists. Joseph, a strained, pale, intense man, described the most
secret workings of the Algerian police state. He revealed that the constant
terror in which civilians live is orchestrated by two shadowy figures, more
powerful than the nominal president, General Liamine Zeroual. The police state
is run as the private fiefdom of two men: Mohammed Mediane, codename "Tewfik",
and General Smain Lamari, the most feared names in Algeria. They are,
respectively, head of the Algeri n secret service, the DRS, and its
sub-department, the counter intelligence agency, the DCE.
"[President] Zeroual is just the cherry on the cake," said Joseph. "Tewfik is
much more important and Smain is his enforcer." Since the military coup in 1992
after the first round of elections in which the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)
was set to take power, the violence has escalated to make Algeria the most
dangerous country in the world. The carnage in Algeria and the bombs in France
have been blamed on a group of Muslim fanatics, the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA.
Joseph said: "The GIA is a pure product of Smain's secret service." His
testimony is supported by a former diplomat, Mohammed Larbi Zitout, No 2 at the
Algerian embassy in Libya until he defected to Britain. "I used to read all the
secret telexes," Joseph said. "I know that the GIA has been infiltrated and
manipulated by the government. The GIA has been completely turned by the
government."
Joseph said secret agents who flew in from Algeria, sent by Smain, organised
"at least" two of the bombs in Paris in the summer of 1995, in which several
people were killed. The operation was run by Colonel Souames Mahmoud, alias
Habib, head of the secret service at the Algerian embassy in Paris. Two men were
later seized by French police. One, Khaled Kelkal, was shot in cold blood, his
killing caught on camera. The second, Karim Moussa, was captured, injured. He
has since disappeared and th French authorities have failed to explain what
happened to this most-wanted suspect.
Joseph said Tewfik and Smain spent some of Algeria's oil and gas billions to
bribe politicians and security officials in Europe. Joseph said: "I personally
delivered a suitcase containing 500,000 francs to one French MP with strong
links to the French intelligence services." The MP, who lost his seat at the
last election, is a noted apologist for the Algerian and Iraqi regimes.
The power of the securite militaire is such that it murdered a president,
Joseph said. President Mohammed Boudiaf was assassinated in June 1992 by people
within le pouvoir. He knows because two of the killers were associates in the
securite militaire. "Boudiaf was killed because he had very sensitive files on
corrupt generals. The generals have made millions from corruption, held in Swiss
banks. Boudiaf started an inquiry." Fatiha Boudiaf, the president's widow, said
last week: "Boudiaf knew that he would be killed by those who brought him to
power" -- a coded reference to the secret police.
Joseph said the massacres, in which tens of thousands of Algerians have been
killed since the civil war started in 1992, have been carried out by the
regime's death squads. "Le pouvoir are behind th massacres and other killings
besides. It's to maintain the state of fear," he said. "In 1992 Smain created a
special group, L'Escadron de la Mort [the Squadron of Death]. One of its main
missions to begin with was to kill officers, colonels. The death squads organise
the massacres. If anyone inside the killing machine hesitates to torture or
kill, they are automatically killed . . . The FIS aren't doing the massacres.
All the intelligence services in Europe know the government is doing it, but
they are keeping quiet because they want to protect their supplies of oil."
Joseph said he had witnessed torture. "I have seen the blowtorch used in
Chateauneuf. The smell is awful. . . . It has a very special smell of burning
hair and flesh." But the blowtorch was not the worst. "I have seen in Antar, a
torture centre near Algiers zoo, a human eye on a table with a fork in it . . .
I have terrible nightmares."
He described electrode torture he had seen. "They manacle a person to a bed,
no mattress, just the springs. Then they get a live electric wire and touch the
person -- he made a swishing movement, his right hand coming down in a lash.
"Smain used to go to the torture zoo and my colleagues would say: 'The Boss is
here. He is working.' That meant he was supervising the torture himself." --
The Guardian Weekly, Week ending November 16, 1997
