CCPR/C/112/D/2132/2012
of Tarek and Mohamed. They also claim that they themselves are victims of violations of
the rights guaranteed under articles 7 and 23 (para. 1), read alone and in conjunction with
article 2 (para. 3). They are represented by Philippe Grant of the organization TRIAL.
1.2
On 28 February 2012, the Committee, through its Special Rapporteur on new
communications and interim measures, decided to grant the protection measures requested
by the authors and asked the State party to refrain from invoking its national legislation,
and specifically Ordinance No. 06-01 of 27 February 2006 on the implementation of the
Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, against the authors and their family
members on the grounds of the present communication.
The facts as presented by the authors
2.1
On 12 April 1994 Adel Kerouane and two accomplices attempted a burglary.
Surprised by security officials, they fled the scene. In the course of the arrest, the security
officials opened fire, killing the two accomplices. Adel Kerouane was taken to hospital with
a bullet wound to the leg and remained there for around two weeks. His father came to visit
him three times. When he came the fourth time, however, he found that Adel was no longer
in the hospital. A member of the hospital staff told him that he had been taken away by the
security services but was unable to say what had become of him.
2.2
Tarek Kerouane, aged 16, was stopped by law enforcement officials on 20 May
1994 on his way home from school. The next day he was taken home by some 20
uniformed and masked police officers and two plain clothes police officers. His uncle, who
lives in the same house, tried to approach the car where his nephew was being held, but the
officials stopped him. Their home was searched but nothing incriminating was found. The
next day Kamela Allioua, Tarek’s grandmother and an author of the complaint, tried to find
out what had happened to him, without success. She then went to the military security
services at the Belle-Vue barracks, where an official told her that she would have to wait
two weeks to find out where Tarek was. Two weeks later the author went back. The official
made a phone call and she heard part of the conversation and realized that he was speaking
to an official at Coudiat prison, who confirmed that Tarek was being held there. After the
call the official merely told the author that Tarek was not being held at the barracks, but did
not say where he actually was.
2.3
At the family’s request, a visiting permit was issued on 3 July 1994 by the
investigating judge of the special court of Constantine, stating that Adel and Tarek
Kerouane were “under arrest at Constantine 25 prison”. However, on the day of the visit,
the prison guards at Constantine told the mother and grandmother of the missing persons
that they were not being held there. Another visiting permit was issued for the same prison
on 28 July 1994. The prison staff again turned Adel and Tarek Kerouane’s mother and
grandmother away, and behaved in a threatening manner towards them. The prison guards
told them that it would be in their interests not to come back because they would not want
to behave unpleasantly to women.
2.4
Mohamed Kerouane, aged 15, was arrested on 22 February 1996, together with a
friend. The friend, who was released a month later, told the Kerouane family that he and
Mohamed had been arrested in the street quite without warning, and detained by officials of
the Hamma gendarmerie. A gendarmerie officer told the family that “some people came for
him” while he was detained, but did not say who these people were. Three months after the
arrest, the family received information, corroborated by several people, that Mohamed’s
body had been recognized as one of a number piled at the side of a road. Shortly afterwards
a friend of the family said they had seen the body at the mortuary. It was lying on the
ground alongside several other bodies. All of them were wearing shoes without laces and
trousers without belts, which, according to the authors, could mean they had been in prison.
According to the friend, Mohamed’s head and body bore the marks of torture and illGE.14-22477
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