CCPR/C/122/D/2398/2014
Civil and Political Rights. The author maintains that he himself is the victim of violations
of articles 2 (2), 7 read in conjunction with article 2 (3), and 21 of the Covenant. The
Covenant and its Optional Protocol entered into force for the State party on 12 December
1989. He is represented by counsel, Nassera Dutour of the Collectif des familles de
disparu(e)s en Algérie.
1.2
On 25 July 2014, the State party requested that the admissibility of the
communication be considered separately from the merits. On 3 October 2014, the
Committee informed the State party and the author of the decision of its Special Rapporteur
on new communications and interim measures to examine the admissibility of the
communication together with the merits.
The facts as submitted by the author
2.1
During the years of conflict in the 1990s, the author was manager of a café in the
centre of Birkhadem municipality (Algiers wilaya (governorate)). He claims that, at that
time, police officers from the town police station would burst into the café twice a week,
order the doors closed and search everyone present, saying that they were looking for
terrorists.
2.2
On 9 September 1993, at around 2 p.m., the author was with his son, Mohamed
Millis, when two armed and uniformed police officers, A.G. (now retired) and A.B. (now
deceased), ordered Mohamed Millis to show them his identity documents. The police
officers then ordered him to follow them, without giving any explanation or showing an
arrest warrant. They took him away in an official vehicle to Birkhadem police station.
There were two witnesses to the events, A.C. and S.M., who, for fear of reprisals, only
dared to report what they had witnessed to Birkhadem town hall on 16 April 2000. The
author followed the police car and witnessed the police grab his son and go into the police
station. He tried to follow them in to find out what was happening. The two officers
allegedly stopped him from doing so, threatened him and subsequently denied being aware
of the arrest of Mohamed Millis.
2.3
Mohamed Millis’s brother then went to the police station with a friend. The police
officers said that there was no mention of Mohamed Millis in the registers. The author
returned to the police station with the two witnesses, A.C. and S.M., and was met with the
same behaviour, although a police officer allegedly asked him to come back with a family
civil-status book. He claims that he never stopped looking for his son, and went many times
to the police station and the gendarmerie, where, allegedly, he was often questioned for
hours. He claims that his son is still alive and is being held incommunicado in an unknown
location without contact with the outside world and without any control over his detention
conditions. His wife’s state of health has allegedly deteriorated greatly as a result of the
shock.
2.4
The author filed a first complaint, to which he received no response, with the
gendarmerie brigade. He has subsequently submitted numerous administrative and judicial
complaints. With regard to judicial remedies, on 28 May 1998, the author sent a complaint
to the public prosecutor at the Court of Algiers and the public prosecutor at the Court of Bir
Mourad Raïs. On 18 February 2006, he wrote again to the public prosecutor at the Court of
Bir Mourad Raïs. Having not received any response, he sent further complaints to the
public prosecutor at the Court of Bir Mourad Raïs on 9 August 2006 and 27 July 2007. On
23 July 2008, in response, he was sent an official statement instructing him to follow the
procedure for compensation provided for in the 2005 Charter for Peace and National
Reconciliation, but providing no information concerning the disappearance of Mohamed
Millis. As compensation is conditional on obtaining a declaration of death, and the author
refused to give up trying to ascertain the truth about the fate of his son, he did not wish to
initiate the procedure. On 6 August 2008 and 20 October 2011, he again sent new
complaints to the public prosecutor at the Court of Bir Mourad Raïs. Despite the complaints,
no investigation has been undertaken and the remedies applied for have proved futile.
2.5
With regard to non-judicial remedies, on 28 May 1998, the author submitted: (a) a
complaint to the President of the Republic and the Minister of Justice; (b) a complaint to
the Chair of the National Human Rights Observatory; and (c) a letter to the Ombudsman,
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GE.18-10582