Algeria: Alkarama addresses UN mechanisms on the case of the forcibly disappeared young activist, Abdelhamid Bouziza

abdelhamid-bouaziza

Alkarama addressed the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, requesting its intervention with the Algerian authorities regarding the young activist Abdelhamid Bouziza, who has been forcibly disappeared since 19 October.

Abdelhamid Bouziza (25), a peaceful activist and social media blogger, denounced the situation of political detainees and peacefully advocated for their defense through social media.

On 19 October 2022, members of the Brigade of Research and Investigation and the National Gendarmerie raided his house in the Saf Saf neighborhood of Shatwan Tlemcen (Northwest), arrested him, and then took him to an unknown destination.

According to his family, his brother went to look for him at the State Security Center in Tlemcen, without any success. He was informed that his brother was transferred to the capital the next day, on 20 October 2022.

Lawyers who went to inquire about him at the court of Tlemcen and in the courts of the capital found no trace or file concerning him.

To date, there is no information on the fate of Abdelhamid Bouziza and his place of detention. His family has also received no contact from him.

Alkarama recalls the gravity of the practice of enforced disappearances which constitute, according to international law, a crime against humanity.

Alkarama also expresses its deep concern regarding the repetition by the current government of the practice of enforced disappearances which resulted in the 1990s in the disappearance of ten to twenty thousand victims.

It should be noted that the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances has received more than three thousand cases of disappearance from Algeria.

For ten years, the Working Group has been calling on the Algerian government to allow visits to the country. Despite an initial approval, visits keep being postponed or canceled, demonstrating the regime's lack of willingness to cooperate with international mechanisms on this issue.