Tunisia
Abdallah Kallel was formely Minister of Interior. Torture was widely spread under his term in office. In February 2001, one of his victims filed a complaint (in french) whilst the ex-Minister was awaiting surgery in the Geneva Cantonal Hospital. Nevertheless, he unfortunatly managed to escape just before being arrested.
— See the criminal complaint filed against Abdallah Kallel (in French)
— For more on the Kallel case, read Pierre Hazan's story in the newspaper Le Temps (21 Fevruary 2001)
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General Habib Ammar was Commander of the Tunisian National Guard from 1984 to 1987. Following the coup d’état, in November 1987, he was rewarded with the post of Minister of the Interior, a post which he held on to for a year.
During the time he was Minister of the Interior, the offices of the Ministry were transformed into centres of detention and torture. The methods of torture employed by the security services and the police forces during this period were particularly brutal, leading to death and long lasting after effects in the case of numerous victims, certain of whom sought asylum in Switzerland.
According to numerous human rights organisations, General Habib Ammar does indeed hold responsibility for the widespread use of torture in Tunisia in the eighties.
On 17 September 2003, TRIAL (Track Impunity Always) and the OMCT (World Organisation Against Torture) submitted a criminal complaint (pdf, in French) against General Habib Ammar for acts torture, to the Attorney General of the Canton of Geneva.
By a decision (pdf, in French), dated 23 September 2003, the Attorney General declared that the complaint against M.Ammar was admissible but judged that, as a member of an official Tunisian delegation to the International Telecommunications Union, he benefited from immunity related to this function. The Attorney General therefore filed and closed the proceedings.
See also (all documents in French):
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