Testimonies of Torture: Fatma-Zohra B. (1995)

Testimonies of Torture

Fatma-Zohra B. (1995)

Excerpt from a report by Algeria-Watch and Salah-Eddine Sidhoum: Algerie: La machine de mort, October 2003, http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/mrv/mrvtort/machine_mort/machine_mort.htm

I am an Algerian citizen living in Algiers.

On the 5th September 1995, armed men wearing black uniforms broke into our house at four in the morning after having smashed the front door in. There were more then ten of them, fully armed. Those who entered the house uncovered their faces. Those who remained outside wore balaclavas. We woke up with a start due to the racket caused by their brutal entrance. They stayed until dawn, until around six in the morning. They hit my husband (an Arabic Language teacher at the local secondary school) and then threw him to the ground, tying him up, arms behind his back and eyes blindfolded with a towel. Three men were guarding him, pointing their kalashnikovs in his back and head, while the others were ransacking the apartment. They threw everything to the ground. Neither books nor china escaped their violence. My twelve-year-old daughter, upon seeing her father hit and thrown to the floor, shouted: ‘Let my father go, let my father go!’ Three policemen began to beat her. One pulled her hair and another hit her shoulder with the butt of his rifle.

The policemen started to break the china and to empty the tanks of water I had filled due to the water cuts. They had reached an unimaginable level of excitement. They were pouring out obscenities, with no respect towards the fact I was a woman or that there were children. In their search they found and took 4000 DA, a sum of money that my neighbour had given my husband for the repair of her roof.

My husband was then taken outside, his wrists tied behind his back and eyes blindfolded with a towel, and was repeatedly kicked and hit with the butts of the policemen’s rifles. He was then thrown into the boot of one of their vehicles. As they were leaving they continued to insult us with vulgarities and to spit on us. The children were crying. They were terrorised by their barbarism. After they left, the apartment looked like a battlefield. Everything was on the floor, books, broken china, scattered clothes, water running from the taps and the tanks.

Two days later, I took three of my children, my four-year-old and nine-year-old sons and my twelve-year-old daughter, and headed towards the Châteauneuf Centre. When we arrived, I recognised some of the policemen who had invaded our home two days earlier. I asked one of them to allow me to see my husband. He initially denied that my husband was detained in the Centre. I then told him I knew he was part of the gang that had broken into my home. Hesitant and bewildered, he ordered me to go in and follow him with my three children. He locked us up in a room with a bed and went out again. Moments later he returned and tied my wrist to the bedpost with his handcuffs and took my children.

After a few moments five policemen came in the room. They began to hurl horrifically obscene abuse at me that I cannot repeat here. They asked me whether I watched pornographic films on Canal+. I endured their obscenities for around two hours. In the early hours of the evening, I could hear the screams of a man who was being tortured. I recognised my husband’s voice. A policeman came to fetch me to witness my husband’s torture sessions.

I stayed twenty days in the torture centre. Many other women were also detained with me.

Once, a torturer came into our cell completely naked. Another time, they brought us a bottle of wine, and forced us to drink it.

We were made to drink a suspicious type of water. We all became dizzy. They tried to dishonour us – to rape us.

My husband was atrociously tortured atrociously. He endured numerous sessions with electricity and then of fallaqa on the soles of his feet. They battered him with a broom, which they broke on his feet. They burnt his body with cigarette buds. All these ordeals were carried out in front of me.

They brought suspicious water that my children and I were made to drink. I was suffering from dizziness and I began to have hallucinations. I could see my husband’s body cut in strips. Then I would hear my husband’s voice telling me to be patient and that he was in Heaven. I no longer knew where I was. I had goose bumps when I heard these voices. I continually heard voices. One time it was my daughter’s voice who was screaming: “You have burnt me!” I then saw in my hallucinations a torturer burn my daughter with a blowtorch and rape her. My husband’s voice was saying: “She’s a child, she’s a child, spare her this torment!”

Then I saw my son slashed in strips with a hacksaw. I could hear my husband’s voice saying to my son: “Patience, patience my son, you will join me in Heaven”. I started to scream and ululate with all my breath. The torturer ran towards me and poured water all over me. I woke up in a start. I had been hallucinating. I had been drugged.

After twenty days, my three children and I were freed. They were completely traumatised by what they had lived through and seen in the torture centre. They were dazed. My husband was incarcerated in the prison at Serkadji.

A year after this ordeal, the same armed men broke into my home once again, at two in the morning. I was with my children. Their father was in prison. They terrorised us for about an hour and their chief told me to show up the next day at the Châteauneuf Centre.

In the morning I headed towards the sinister place where I had spent such a horrific time. I was interrogated about my daily life and on the origin of our income. I was intimidated and promised ‘more nocturnal visits’.

What could I do facing this hogra? Leave my destiny with God and Him Alone.

Fatma-Zohra B.
September 1999
Algiers