(English) The ‘Black Decade’ still weighs heavily on Algeria

Ten years after amnesty deal, relatives of civil war victims say Algeria has failed to reach national reconciliation.
Algiers – On October 12, the Algerian authorities shut down private channel El Watan TV and confiscated its technical equipment, following Islamist leader Madani Mezrag’s appearance on the station.
The channel “has stepped over the line of tolerance”, Algeria’s Ministry of Communications explained in a statement.
During an interview on the programme El Hiwar (Arabic for “The Discussion”), Mezrag, founder of the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS), the armed wing of the now-banned Islamic Salvation Front Party (FIS), warned ailing Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika about the creation of a new Islamist movement.
“If he doesn’t rethink his position, he will hear from me things he has never heard before,” Mezrag threatened.

Last August, speaking to dozens of former FIS supporters in his stronghold of Jijel, the 56-year-old firebrand made his intentions clear. Mezrag, who spent the 1990s in the mountains fighting against the army until his surrender in 1997, wanted to create a political force.
Though his party would be based on the tenets of the FIS, it would nevertheless be in compliance with Algeria’s political system, Mezrag vowed.

“We are not going back to the past. The 1990s are left in history. We want to turn the page, but not tear the page out,” said Mezrag in September during a press conference at his home in Algiers.
His nascent Islamist movement has not yet been officially registered.
“We don’t permit any person implicated in the national tragedy to create a political party,” declared Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal on the opening day of the parliament’s autumn session.