Friday, 20 September, 2002, 15:26 GMT 16:26 UK
Turkey bars Islamic leader from poll
The leader of Turkey's most popular party has been banned from running in November's general election because of his criminal record.
The country's electoral board ruled that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the head of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), could not take part because of his conviction on charges of "Islamist sedition".
Turkish law disqualifies candidates with criminal records from running for office - although Mr Erdogan had challenged those rules citing recent amendments to the Turkish penal code.
Also barred from running were former pro-Islamic premier Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of the country's pro-Kurdish party (Hadep), Murat Bozlak, and the most prominent Turkish human rights activist, Akin Birdal.
All three men have been convicted of sedition in the past.
The AK Party, which has religious origins and champions the poor, tops most opinion polls in the staunchly secular, but mainly Muslim country.
Mr Erdogan, a former mayor of Istanbul, was convicted in 1998 for publicly reading a poem that included the lines: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers."
Mr Erdogan may be succeeded as AK's candidate by his deputy, Abdullah Gul, who is considered a moderate, newspapers say.
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Sounds familiar?
Algeria: The Dirty War 1992-2000
Out of the dark,
into the courts
The Algerian establishment usually ignores widespread allegations of human rights abuses by its military, but a book by one of its former officers has drawn a top Algerian general into the limelight via a French court. James Badcock reports.
"I have seen fellow soldiers burn alive a fifteen-year-old boy; I have seen colonels murder mere suspects in cold blood; I have seen officers torture to the death; I have seen too many things?"
This is the testimony of Habib Souaidia, once a sub-lieutenant in the Algerian army, now a political exile in France and author of The Dirty War 1992-2000, a book that has sold around 65,000 copies in France.
In it, Souaidia claims that since the cancellation of the 1992 elections, which the Islamists were set to win, the army has pursued a ruthless programme of assassinations, torture and 'disappearances' against opposition groups.
Souaidia claims to have personally witnessed about 100 such killings, even claiming that soldiers sometimes disguised themselves as Islamist militants before embarking on massacres later attributed to the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
Yet it was not his book that prompted Algerian Army general Khaled Nezzer to bring a case of defamation against Souaidia, but his appearance on France's Channel 5 TV, in which he repeated his claim that "the generals?killed thousands of people".
Thus in appearing before a Paris court on July 1, Nezzer said he was not only defending his own honour, but also "the honour of the Algerian army".
Souaidia claims that Nezzer, then defence minister, was the driving force behind the cancellation of Algeria's first multi-party elections in 1992, and reputedly led the five-man High State Committee that assumed power for the following five years.
On the TV programme, Souaidia argued that it was the generals "who decided to stop the electoral process; it is they who are responsible".
During the trial, Nezzer justified this act, saying "we knew the second round was going to be a sweep (for the Islamist party), the Afghanisation of Algeria".
Souaidia assembled thirty witnesses to back his version of undercover missions and widespread human rights abuses, claiming that systematic state terror turned "a soldier who should apply the law" into "a terrorist who tortures and rapes".
He claims to have been part of an "anti-terrorist unit" disguised as bearded rebels: "We arrested people, tortured them and burnt their bodies."
For his part, General Nezzer's witnesses were drawn from the political establishment and high-ranking army officials.
The trial took place against the background of an alarming recrudescence of Algeria's internal conflict.
Over 800 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since January, the latest chapter of ten years of fighting which has claimed the lives of somewhere between one and two thousand Algerians.
The army claims to have accounted for 20,000 Islamic militants, with responsibility for the rest of the victims officially laid at the door of the GIA. Souaidia's testimony contradicts this claim. His lawyer, William Bowden, suggested that "in condemning Souaidia, General Nezzer is seeking to acquit the Algerian army".
[snip]
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