The shooting death of a Berber youth in police custody in April was not an accident as earlier claimed, an Algerian government-ordered investigation found, according to a report released Sunday, cited by AFP.
Mohamed Guermah -- whose death sparked weeks of rioting in the Berber homeland of Kabylie that claimed dozens of lives -- was shot in two separate three-bullet bursts, said the report commissioned by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
"The firing mechanism must be triggered twice in order to fire three bullets and then another three," the report said, quoting experts.
The bloody security crackdown that followed was also investigated in the report, which said: "The national gendarmerie has been isolated and is solely implicated."
"The violent reaction of the people was provoked by the equally violent action of police, who, for more than two months kept events going: shooting live bullets, sacking and looting property, provocations of all kinds, obscene remarks and beatings," the report said.
"The violence recorded against the civilians is like a war, using war munitions," it said.
After Guermah died in police custody, riots then erupted in Amizour, near the northeastern region's largest city Bejaia, after police allegedly manhandled two secondary school students they had taken in for questioning.
Clashes between youths demanding an end to “government oppression” and security forces, which first broke out in April, have lately exploded to claim the lives of 56 people and injure 2,300 others, according to official figures, while opposition parties and the private press say that 80-100 people have died.
Last week, a policeman was killed by unknown attackers near the capital of the Kabylie area, Tizi Ouzou, and on Thursday, several thousand people staged a protest march in Algeria's northeastern city of Bejaia against “oppression by the government of ethnic Berbers.”
The marchers, who wound through the city center under a blazing sun, carried placards denouncing "repression" by the security forces.
The rioting gave vent to longstanding resentment over perceived discrimination and police misconduct against Algeria's large Berber minority.
Berbers, who make up about 33 percent of the Algerian population, are fed up with the government’s Arabization policies, which they feel have left their culture sidelined, if not outright suppressed. Language remains a flashpoint: despite the introduction of Berber language in schools in 1999, activists are still outraged by lawmaker’s attempts to make Arabic the country’s official language.
Meanwhile, complaints of economic marginalization have become intertwined with ethnic strife. Hocine Ait-Ahmed, the exiled president of the Berber-based Socialist Forces Front (FFS) told France Inter that the Algerian people were "living under increasing poverty," and that young people no longer believed in political change -- Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
