ALGIERS: Fourteen Algerians jailed in Iraq for at least seven years after summary trials are pleading for their release, the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights (LADDH) announced Tuesday.
"Fourteen Algerians arrested in 2003 and 2004 in Iraq are being held in a prison in Baghdad," LADDH Secretary General Moumene Khelil told AFP by telephone. "We were contacted by a detainee in this prison and we don’t have other details."
"There could be other Algerian nationals in other Iraqi prisons, but we don’t know for now," he added.
LADDH President Mostepha Bouchachi said that he had spoken to the prisoner, who he did not name. The detainee told him that he and his comrades "did not commit acts of violence" during their stay in Iraq, but they were arrested in Baghdad and accused of "belonging to terrorist groups."
They were tried by an ad hoc special court with no legal means of defense and sentenced for between 10 and 15 years in prison, the prisoner told Bouchachi.
Bouchachi cited Al-Qaeda and other movements that were active in Iraq to fight against the invasion by US-led foreign troops in 2003 in their successful bid to oust longtime strongman Saddam Hussein.
But according to Bouchachi, the detainees believe they were victims of injustice and they are asking "to be pardoned, though innocent, like other Iraqi detainees sentenced for the same motives have been."
Iraqi authorities are expected to organize a wave of pardons to mark the holy Muslim feast of Eid Al-Adha early in November.
"We have made contact with Iraqi diplomats here. It is too soon to judge what their capacity to respond will be," Khelil said.
The LADDH has also put the case to Algerian authorities and asked the international Red Cross to visit the Baghdad prison to find out about detention conditions.
