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Amnesty International Report 1995 - Niger

Dozens of members of the Tuareg minority ethnic group were detained without charge or trial, one for six months. Many were prisoners of conscience. Most were beaten and some were tortured; two reportedly died in custody as a result. There were reports of possible extrajudicial executions.

Throughout the year the authorities faced strikes by civil servants and students seeking financial compensation for the devaluation of the currency in January. In March a student was killed in violent clashes between students and the security forces on the university campus in the capital, Niamey.

There was conflict in the north of the country involving armed Tuareg political groups. From the beginning of the year onwards, tension increased in the north following the decision in December 1993 by one of the Tuareg armed organizations, the Front de libération de Tamoust (FLT), Liberation Front of Tamoust, not to renew the truce signed in June 1993 with the government of President Mahmane Ousmane. The rebels resumed attacks and at least two civilians were killed in January near Agadès, the main town in the north, when armed Tuaregs attacked a convoy of vehicles under military escort.

In October the government and the Coordination de la résistance armée (CRA), Coordination of the Armed Resistance, the coordinating body of all armed Tuareg groups, signed a peace agreement in Ouagadougou in neighbouring Burkina Faso. Both parties agreed to the creation of an international commission of inquiry into human rights abuses committed by the army and rebel Tuareg groups, but it was not clear who was to be asked to carry out the investigations.

Five people detained briefly in Niamey appeared to be prisoners of conscience. In January four students were arrested during a meeting. They were subsequently tried and each received a six-month suspended sentence for assault and battery against members of the security forces. There was apparently no evidence that they had been involved in acts of violence. Also in January the secretary general of the Union des scolaires du Niger (USN), Niger’s Union of School Pupils, Boubacar Siddo, was ar-rested when he tried to visit the four detained students. He was accused of inciting violence but was released a week later after a court found no grounds for the charge against him.

Dozens of Tuareg detained during the year were prisoners of conscience, arrested solely on account of their ethnic origin. Although Tuareg armed groups resorted to violence, these prisoners were not known to have used or advocated violence and appeared to be detained as part of a policy of reprisals. For example, in August, two days after a violent attack by rebels in Tchirozerine, the army arrested some 60 civilians of Tuareg origin in Timia, most of whom were women and children. After three days of detention, all the detainees were released except three (see below). Dozens of others, briefly detained by the army solely because of their Tuareg origin, fled their villages and camps to take refuge in towns.

Although most Tuareg detainees were held for only short periods, one, Assalek Ag Ibrahim, arrested in Agadès in May, was held for six months and released uncharged in November. No reasons were given for his detention, but it appeared he was suspected of contact with the rebels.

Five nationals from neighbouring Nigeria were detained without trial throughout the year. All were members of the Movement for the Advancement of Democracy (MAD), which organized the hijacking of an airplane in October 1993 at Niamey airport in pursuit of demands for greater democracy in Nigeria. Four were arrested on the airplane and charged with hijacking. One other, Jerry Youssouf, suspected of complicity, was arrested in Nigeria in November 1993 and secretly transferred to custody in Niger where he was held uncharged for over a year. In June 1994 a court in Niamey ruled that there was no reason for his continued detention but he remained in prison and was finally charged in December with complicity in hijacking.

Many Tuareg detained by the army or gendarmerie were beaten and some were tortured. In May, five Tuaregs arrested in Agadès were severely beaten and two of them died in custody, apparently as a result. There was no official investigation into the cause of these deaths. The three others were apparently still held without charge or trial at the end of the year. In August, after a rebel attack near Tchirozerine, the army arrested dozens of Tuareg civilians. They were severely beaten and one of them, according to a medical certificate, had his ribs broken. The Tuareg detained in Timia in August were reportedly severely beaten and two pregnant women among them suffered miscarriages.

There were reports of possible extrajudicial executions. Three Tuareg men arrested in Timia in August - Ilias Ahwal, Ilias Algabit and Adam Hamane - were killed by soldiers apparently in retaliation for the killing of three soldiers by rebels some days previously.

At the beginning of 1994, details were received of two possible extrajudicial executions which had occurred near Agadès in December 1993: Warghiss Founta and Karbey Moussa, both market gardeners, were shot dead by soldiers at the oasis of Tchin-Tibizguit, six kilometres from Agadès, when they were transporting vegetables to the market. The killings appeared to be in reprisal for the theft of a vehicle some hours before in Agadès, allegedly by armed rebels. The Mayor of Agadès lodged a complaint about these killings but no judicial investigation was known to have been initiated.

Amnesty International publicly expressed its concern that some prisoners were detained by the security forces simply on account of their Tuareg ethnic origin and in the absence of any evidence that they were connected with armed groups. Amnesty International was also concerned at reports of beatings and torture and the failure of the authorities to hold members of the security forces to account for their actions. It urged the government to investigate all allegations of torture, deaths in custody and extrajudicial executions and to bring those responsible to justice.