Algeria: Human rights defender and wife of disappeared arrested at Algiers airport

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06 Dec 2012
Farida Ouaghlissi, a 49-year-old human rights Algerian activist and a wife of one of the victims of disappearance, was arrested on 3 December at Algiers airport where she was waiting to a take a flight to Geneva in order to participate in the 2012 Alkarama Award ceremony. Worried about these reprisals by the Algerian authorities to intimidate human rights defenders, Alkarama has submitted her case to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders.
For years, Farida Ouaghlissi, who is a member of the Committee of the Algerian League of Human Rights and the Constantine Association of Families of Victims of Forced Disappearances, has documented cases of forced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial executions that occurred during the "black decade." Our organization has submitted many of these cases to the Special Procedures and to the UN Human Rights Committee. On 1 July 2009, she mandated Alkarama to submitt a complaint to the Human Rights Committee concerning the forced disappearance of her husband, Maamar Ouaghlissi, following his arrest by the security services in Constantine on 27 September 1994. In May 2012, the Human Rights Committee found the Algerian state guilty in this case and confirmed that grave human rights violations had been committed.

During her last visit to Geneva in December 2011, Farida Ouaghlissi was able to meet with various UN Special Procedures to brief them on the cases of forced disappearance and on the reprisals carried out by the Algerian authorities against human rights activists and Algerian civil society organizations.

At the time of her arrest, Farida Ouaghlissi was in possession of documents and files relative to complaints of families of the disappeared addressed to the Human Rights Committee and USB drives containing information on human rights violations in Algeria addressed to our organization. After having completed all of the customs and police formalities, she went into the lounge, where members of the security services arrived and demanded she follow them just prior to boarding.

She was brought to an office where police officers, some of whom were in plainclothes, were waiting. She was submitted to a particularly humiliating search that was intentionally prolonged to ensure that she missed her flight, and indeed, she was prevented from leaving Algiers until the next day. Her documents were confiscated as well as the USB drives and several CDs and DVDs in her possession. The Algerian security services refused to return her personal items and the confiscated documents under the pretext that she could not retrieve them until after her trip.

There is no doubt that these practices constitute measures of reprisal and clearly had the goal of intimidating a human rights activist who is especially active in the defense of the families of victims of forced disappearance. These actions were taken with the aim of silencing any voices denouncing the serious human rights violations in Algeria.

Measures of reprisal such as these also aim to dissuade other victims whose fundamental rights have been violated from reporting their experiences to the human rights protection mechanisms instituted by the United Nations. We are particularly concerned that the treatment that Farida Ouaghlissi was subject to had a direct connection to the decision rendered by the Human Rights Committee with regards to her husband.
 
For more information or an interview, please contact media@alkarama.org (Dir: +41 22 734 1008).
Algeria
Enforced Disappearance
Human Rights Defenders
Free Assembly/Association