10 September 2008

Press : A Geneva NGO upsets Arab countries

9 September 08 - Over the past four years, the Geneva based NGO, Alkarama has filed thousands of complaints to the UN regarding human rights violations by Arab states. Algeria has launched regular attacks on one of its members in Switzerland but relations between Bern and Algiers appear unaffected

Carole Vann/Juan Gasparini/Human Rights TribuneAlkarama was founded in Geneva by former political prisoners from Arab countries who use the means offered by international treaties to denounce human rights violations throughout the Arab world.

The NGO has filed numerous complaints to various ad hoc organs of the UN Human Rights Council in the name of victims in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.

Consequently, these governments view with a jaundiced eye the emergence of this ‘new form of justice’ that presents evidence difficult to refute. This new power no doubt explains the current offensive by the Algerian government against one of the cogs in the wheel of the association.

On August 22nd, during a preparatory meeting for the current session of the Human Rights Council, Algerian ambassador Idriss Jazairy denounced, without naming him, Rachid Mesli, a former political prisoner and a refugee in Switzerland since 2000. The ambassador deplored the fact that a member of an NGO ‘who is the subject of an international arrest warrant’ was allowed to address the Human Rights Council.

Numerous violations in Algeria

The ambassador was referring to the June session where Rachid Mesli denounced, as a representative of the Arab Commission for Human Rights , the numerous human rights violations committed in Algeria.

The long-time militant lawyer knows first hand about forced disappearance and torture during his four years in Algerian jails. When freed in 1999 he obtained political asylum in Switzerland and continued his activities as a human rights lawyer. He has accordingly presented hundreds of files to the UN regarding Algerian victims.

‘I always annoy the authorities in my country by taking up the cause of political prisoners’, said Rachid Mesli with a nonchalant air, receiving HRT in the Alkarama office in Geneva not far from the UN’s European headquarters.

‘What drove them crazy was when I delivered a file on Abbasid Madani and Ali Belhadj in 2001 to the working group on arbitrary detentions which acknowledged that the two leaders of the FIS (Front islamique du salut) were detained following a flawed judicial process. Last year, the Human Rights Committee condemned Algeria for this same case.’

International arrest warrant

‘I was condemned to 20 years imprisonment for contempt of court in Algeria’, Mesli went on. ‘They asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant, accusing me of forming an armed terrorist group in Switzerland.’

Reached by telephone, Ambassador Idriss Jazairy did not want to add anything to his declaration of August 22nd and the same discretion was observed by the Federal Bureau of Justice in Bern when asked if Interpol had contacted Swiss authorities regarding Rachid Mesli.

‘The activities of Mr. Mesli and of the NGO Alkarama where he works do not pose any problems between Switzerland and Algeria,’ Jean-Philippe Jutzi, spokesman for the DFAE assured HRT. ‘Alkarama is an organization whose competence is recognized by international and UN organizations that are active in defending human rights.’

For his part, Rachid Mesli says that ‘in fact it’s Alkarama that Algeria and other Arab countries seek to target. They want to prevent our organization from receiving accreditation and being officially recognized by the UN.’

Little known in the corridors of the UN

Despite its activism, Alkarama remains unknown within Geneva’s international community.

‘We suddenly learned about them during a visit to Switzerland last June by Sami Mohieldin El Haj, a Sudanese journalist with the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera who was released from 7 years detention at Guantanamo, said a militant from an important Western NGO who asked to remain anonymous. He asked himself qestions about the backing and political leanings of Alkarama and whether it might be an Islamic organization trying to infiltrate into the West. ‘We were impressed by the professional precision and the breadth of this NGO’s connections’.

‘I know little about Alkarama,’ admits Philipp Grant, the founder of TRIAL (Track Impunity Always). However I’ve known Rachid Mesli for a long time. He is a serious, involved attorney who is shrewd and clearly democratic. Rachid is the flea on the Algerian skin. We need more like him in the Arab world.’

From : Human Rights Tribune

(Article translated from french, original article here )