Mr. Maamar Ouaghlissi, aged 36, was born in Constantine, in Algeria, he was married and had two children. He worked as a senior technician in the National Rail Transport infrastructure service (SNTF). Mr. Ouaghlissi was arrested on 27 September 1994 at his place of work by three plainclothes officers who identified themselves as being members of the Security (Al Amn), without indicating the reason for this arrest. Since then, Mr. Ouaghlissi has disappeared.

Despite all the efforts made by the family to know his fate, his wife only learned after eight months of detention, via a released prisoner, that he was detained at the barracks of Mansura, which is under the authority of the 5th Military Region and managed by the Department of Intelligence and Security (Departement du Renseignement et de la Securité - DRS). Until late 1995, several witnesses reported to his family that he was detained in a military barracks.

Many arrests and kidnappings targeting in particular members of municipal councils, elected members and grassroots activists or sympathizers of the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut – FIS) had taken place the previous day and throughout the month in Constantine. The arrest of Mr. Maamar Ouaghlissi probably falls under the same operation planned and coordinated at the highest level of the state and enforced by the police and the DRS of Constantine.

According to many testimonies of survivors, all those arrested by Judicial Police were detained for weeks or months incommunicado at police headquarters in Constantine where they were systematically tortured and then transferred to the Territorial Centre for Research and Investigation (CTRI) of the 5th Military Region which was under the authority of the DRS and at that time under the direction of Colonel Kamel Hamoud. Those abducted by the DRS were, however, directly taken to the CTRI and most of the victims disappeared.

For the province of Constantine alone, over a thousand people were abducted by the police, the National People's Army (ANP) or the DRS and are missing to date. Most of these cases were submitted by Alkarama and the Association of the Families of the Disappeared in Constantine to the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances and have not, to this day, been clarified by the authorities in Algiers.

Among her many efforts, Ms. Ouaghlissi approached the prosecutor of the Court of Constantine before whom a complaint of disappearance and abduction had already been filed by the father. The floor of Constantine has never agreed to open an investigation or to respond to this complaint, thus becoming complicit in this crime.

It was not until 1998, faced with her continuing insistence, that the Attorney Constantine finally received and listened to Mrs Ouaghilissi's story. Though minutes were recorded, an investigation was never opened and witnesses were never heard. Amazingly, her husband's colleagues from his workplace have never been summoned to be heard.

Mrs. Farida Ouaghlissi again filed a complaint 28 September 1998 before the committee of the Wilaya established to receive complaints from families of the victims of enforced disappearance. Two years later, she was summoned by the police to be notified that research on the disappearance of her husband remained without results.

All internal remedies having been exhausted, but also in view of Order No. 6/01 concerning the "implementation of the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation" promulgated on 27 February 2006 prohibiting any complaint about crimes committed by the Algerian security services, it was ultimately to the Human Rights Committee that Mrs. Ouaghlissi addressed herself.

In a lengthy memorandum presented by the Algerian Government on 25 November 2009 it raises the inadmissibility of Mrs Ouaghlissi's complaint, on the pretext that the responsibility of public officials responsible for crimes committed between 1993 and 1998 could not be accepted and that the question of enforced disappearances in Algeria should be addressed in a comprehensive framework. All the arguments presented and developed by the Algerian government before the UN body were, however, rejected.

The Human Rights Committee has again condemned the Algerian Government, noting that the disappearance of Mr. Ouaghlissi constitutes a number of violations of rights protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Algeria is a party since 1989.

The UN Committee asks Algeria to "conduct a thorough and rigorous investigation into the disappearance" of Mr. Maamar Ouaghlissi, to "provide the author and her daughters with detailed information about the results of its investigation" to " release immediately if he is still held incommunicado" or, in case of death "returned his remains to his family" to "pursue, prosecute and punish those responsible for violations committed" and provide "adequate compensation to the families of victims for the violations suffered." The Algerian government is also expected to make public this decision and information on measures taken to implement it within six months.