The main defendant accused of the massacre of at least 240 people in a suburb of Algeria's capital in 1997 has been sentenced to death, state radio reported on Monday. Fouad Boulemia, a member of the dissolved Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was on Sunday evening convicted by the Algiers criminal court of the September 1997 massacre in Bentalha on the eastern outskirts of the city. The FIS was dissolved in 1992 after the military intervened in January of that year to cancel the second round of a general election the Muslim fundamentalist party was poised to win in the north African country. The death sentence was the second to be passed on Boulemia. He has already been convicted of the murder in 1999 of a senior FIS leader, Abdelkader Hachani.
| "Abdelkader, we've decided it's time for you to retire! [BANG!]" |
The cancellation of the 1992 election triggered an insurgency which has claimed at least 150 000 lives, according to official tolls and press reports, but has waned since its height in the mid-1990s. The military wing of the FIS was disbanded at the end of the decade when many of its members took advantage of a conditional amnesty granted by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Two other groups, however, have sustained a low-level insurgency. The most active today is the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which on June 21 attacked and damaged the Hamma power station near Algiers.
Monday's local press reported that under the orders of Algerian police chief Ali Tounsi, police have begun to install surveillance cameras at strategic points in the capital. The official reason reported in the newspapers was to help police in cracking down on theft and assault, but much of the press speculated that the main aim was to try to prevent such attacks as the one on the power station. According to official figures, more than 5 000 crimes and offences, including 167 murders, have been perpetrated in Algiers so far this year. Convicts on death row have not been executed in Algeria since 1993, when seven men were shot by firing squad for their part in a bomb attack the previous year on Algiers airport which killed nine people and wounded dozens of others. Algerian Justice Minister Tayeb Belaiz announced at the beginning of July that the government was considering the abolition of capital punishment.
| If I was them, I'd wait until the Bad Guys give up committing capital crimes, but maybe that's just me... |
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