Algeria: Algerian security force members were responsible for the disappearances of 6,146 civilians during a decade-long struggle with Islamic rebels, a government-appointed commission has concluded.
"The 6,146 I am referring to are people who have disappeared because of the actions of agents of the state [ security forces]," Farouk Ksentini, appointed by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to investigate the disappearances, said.
"We cannot say whether they are dead or alive. We have said that they have disappeared," he said, adding that the agents had acted on their own initiative and not on orders of the state.
The missing are presumed dead.
This report is unprecedented as it addresses the hitherto taboo issue of the involvement of state forces in unlawful acts during the war.
The missing, suspected of being rebels or providing support for them, were taken in for interrogation by security forces across the north African country in the 1990s and never seen again.
Algeria plunged into near civil war when militants unleashed a holy war or jihad after the army cancelled legislative elections in 1992 that the radical Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was set to win. The army feared an Iranian-style revolution.
Authorities estimate that 150,000 people died during the Islamic uprising. Violence has sharply fallen in recent years.
The investigation forms part of the president's national reconciliation programme to unite the country and comes ahead of an expected amnesty to rebels still fighting.