Abdelaziz Bouteflika had left the former defense minister to fend for himself in Paris in the face of French justice. What will Tebboune do?
The investigation opened in Switzerland against General Nezzar following a complaint on the initiative of Trial International filed in October 2011 should, against all expectations, finally lead to a trial for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This is what the public prosecutor of the confederation is moving towards after a final hearing of Khaled Nezzar, 85, between February 2 and 4. The former strongman of the army at the time of the interruption of the electoral process on January 11, 1992, was able to leave Switzerland free and his lawyers promised that he would come to defend himself if the case had to be referred to a Swiss court. . The closing of the investigation should, according to the civil party, pave the way for such a referral for the trial of Khaled Nezzar before the Federal Criminal Court, in Bellinzona in Italian-speaking Switzerland.
“This is the last opportunity for Algerian victims to obtain justice. No one has ever been prosecuted in Algeria, let alone tried for crimes committed during the civil war,” Philip Grant, director of Trial, told Le Temps newspaper. General Nezzar is being prosecuted for “murders, acts of torture, inhuman treatment and arbitrary detentions” which occurred during the period when they were the strong man of the HCE between January 1992 and January 1994.
The Algerian complainants, who remain anonymous, suffered physical and moral harm during this period.
Calls for help
General Nezzar’s lawyers say they are confident in defending their principal, but all eyes quickly turned to Algiers to scrutinize an official reaction from the authorities of his country. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was immediately arrested on the development of Khaled Nezzar’s legal case in Switzerland, by some of his supporters on Youtube.
At the start of the procedure in 2011, General Nezzar invoked his position as Minister of Defense to avoid legal action. The argument was not accepted. For the part of the Algerian system which considers that the halt in the electoral process “saved Algeria from an Islamic state”, General Nezzar is a “hero” whom the Algerian state must protect. He was discreetly supported by his peers in the ANP during the defamation lawsuit he brought in Paris in 2002 against Lieutenant Habib Souaidia.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whom General Nezzar did not want to lead Algeria when his candidacy was looming in September 1998, did not intervene in favor of the former Minister of Defense, who it is true was a complainant in that case. Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who has multiplied bodybuilder declarations on the “power of Algeria”, and its sovereignty in all circumstances, finds itself in the embarrassment of doing nothing with the Swiss government in the face of this direct intrusion into the contemporary history of his country. Because what is at stake in the Nezzar trial, if it takes place, is indeed the role of the ANP in stopping the electoral process and the brutal methods used by its command to repress the FIS even before the fight against terrorism.
A major political issue that engages the Algerian power system. It will be difficult for Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who himself owes his arrival to the presidency, in December 2019, to the General Staff of the ANP, to let Khaled Nezzar fight for his defense without his active public support.
A political trap
A diplomatic intervention by Algiers with Bern should not change the outcome of the procedure, the federal court had ordered a resumption of the investigation after a first abandonment of the proceedings in 2017. Such an intervention, which will have to require a deliberation , would have an internal political consumption.
Abdelmadjid Tebboune accompanied General Saïd Chengriha, Chief of Staff in his offensive against the military leadership inherited from the long years of the reign of his deceased predecessor, General Ahmed Gaïd Salah. To consolidate the brutal exit from the chaotic era of Gaïd Salah, the Tebboune-Chengriha tandem rehabilitated Generals Nezzar and Toufik, the victims of the former Chief of Staff who most embody the ‘golden age policy of the army, the one which corresponds precisely to the period incriminated before the Swiss justice. They co-opted the new high security council (HC) of the men of the former boss of the DRS and restored Nezzar to the status of a respected patriarch.
It is now a matter of going further and endorsing the morbid legacy of these military officials during the civil war of the 1990s. Abdelmadjid Tebboune will hesitate to do so because if his commitment in defense of Khaled Nezzar were to, as is most likely to have no effect on the course of justice in Switzerland, he would lose a great deal.
Supporting General Nezzar can prove to be all the more complicated as another affair, this time affecting his son Lotfi, could start in Europe, with a section in Switzerland. These are audio leaks where we can hear the son of General Nezzar playing the role of intermediary in preparations for an action by the Algerian services targeting the opponent Hicham Abboud in Europe. At the same time, he would be risking politically to President Tebboune to leave a leader of the ANP alone before a foreign court for facts which, in reality, involved the choice of all the Algerian power of the time and therefore mobilized the State. Abdelaziz Bouteflika could afford it in a different context, where General Nezzar was at the initiative of the trial and risked at worst being dismissed. This may no longer be the case with the Swiss procedure which is moving towards judgment. It would morally invalidate the impunity decreed by the amnesty law of 2006, known as the national reconciliation law.
