Algerians remember April 11

04/04/2008

It has been one year since the April 11th suicide attacks which targeted the Government Palace and a police station on the outskirts of Algiers. For the victims' families, attack survivors, and relatives of the suicide bombers, memories are still fresh, as is the pain.

By Nazim Fethi for Magharebia in Algiers - 04/04/08

[Getty Images] The April 11th 2007 bombings in Algiers remain fresh in the minds of Algerians. The pain of losing loved ones is sharp for the families of both victims and the perpetrators.

"The sky was grey on the morning of April 11th, 2007. Boulevard Krim Belkacem, overshadowed by the Government Palace, was in the middle of a horrendous traffic jam. It was exactly 10:45 when I found myself being thrown to the ground by the force of the explosion," remembers Rachid Bouguerra, showing us his scars from the attack. "As I fell, I was showered with fragments of glass from the windows."

Rachid is a double survivor. In 1994, he miraculously escaped the bomb attack which targeted Algiers’ central police station. In shock, he left Algeria to settle in Germany. He returned to his homeland in 2006, believing peace had returned.

Bouhoui Tahar, 60, was a married father of seven. He was supposed to retire in a few weeks. Bouirane Fatah, 36, was expecting his first child with his wife of six months. Beloud Nabil, 35, planned to marry in the summer of 2007.

The three firemen had much in common. They worked at the same station. They were friends who often helped one another out. They died together in the same car.

On April 11th, at 10:55 in the morning, chance dictated that they be in the same vehicle outside their fire station in the eastern Algiers suburb of Bab-Ezzouar. The police station targeted by the suicide bomber's car was right next door.

Friends at the Bonheur housing estate where they lived, mourned for them and remember them still. One of their colleagues recalls: "I was getting bodies out of the cars, just after the attack. I didn't pay any particular attention to the vehicle behind us… [We] never thought for one minute that three of our colleagues were lying under the mass of metal which used to be our service vehicle… [T]he car was unrecognisable. It wasn’t even its distinctive red colour anymore."

The three friends were buried on the same day, in the same cemetery in Aïn Taya.

Kamelia, a child barely three years of age, was among the victims. She escaped with minor head injuries. On the morning of April 11th, she was in the Esplanade day nursery, about ten metres from the Government Palace.

Traumatized by the explosion, she has never set foot in the nursery again. Her mother Saliha Djouzi still cannot believe what happened. "It had been ten years since Algiers had witnessed a bomb attack. I didn’t think we’d have to go through the same horror again."

The man responsible for the suicide attack on the Government Palace was not known as a notorious terrorist or an Islamist extremist. Merouane Boudina, (aka Mouâad Bin Djabel), the only man one to appear with his face uncovered in the photos placed online by al-Qaeda, was an unemployed 28-year-old from Hai El Badr, on the outskirts of Algiers.

People living in the shanty town were surprised to see the young man they knew identified as a suicide bomber. Merouane "lived just like us, from everyday jobs," his friends assured Magharebia. "He sold sardines in the markets around the district and liked football and the local team."

His brother Farid still cannot understand his brother's transformation: "He took drugs, had dealings with crooks and often got into scuffles with the neighbours. My mother and sister suffered so much because of it. Suddenly, his behaviour changed and he started going to the mosque. I don't understand how they could have brainwashed him in such a short time."

Merouane is not an isolated case. The suicide bomber who attacked the Algerian naval barracks in Dellys on September 8th, 2007, killing around 30 sailors, was only 15 years old. Nabil Belkacem was from Badjarrah, another working-class district on the outskirts of Algiers, a few metres from Merouane's poor neighbourhood. He was preparing to take his middle school certificate exam to get into high school.

Al-Qaeda had other plans.

Nabil's family still cannot accept what happened to Nabil. "He’s one of the most respectful and quiet children. I watched him grow up, and I would never have thought that he could harm someone one day," declares his grandmother, in tears.

Neighbours praise the way in which Nabil and his two younger brothers were raised. "He played ball games and never raised his voice or showed any lack of respect," one says.

"He prayed," Nabil's mother says, "but he didn’t behave like an extremist. He never banned television or music. He never gave a single indication of his extremist leanings. He never talked about politics, and even less about the government," she says.

"Then he started going to the mosque regularly, while still going to school. He never missed a day, until the day when he spent the night at the mosque, and then he disappeared. He called me on a mobile phone to tell me not to worry and that he’d be coming home. That was ten days before the BEM (school certificate exam)," his tearful mother tells us. She breaks off for a moment, then wiping the tears from her eyes, she forces herself to take up her tale once more.

"He told me: 'Mum, I'm frightened. I don't know where I am. I want to run away, but I'm scared they will kill you. They warned me that if I ever escaped, they would take it out on you. But don't worry, I'll find an opportunity to run away.' Then he hung up... I told everyone. I did all I could to save him, but they ended up killing him. I know they forced him to go in that wretched van to kill all those sailors. I know he wanted to escape, and the driver forcibly restrained him."

She pauses. "He was just a kid. They are killing our children. Why choose children? If it were an adult, I'd say he got what he deserved, but this is just a child that adults have turned into a suicide bomber," she blurts out tearfully.

Speaking of the thirty sailors killed that Sunday morning while hoisting the national flag, she declares, "Just as bad as Nabil’s death was the knowledge that he'd been used to butcher thirty Algerians."

[Getty Images] The September 8th 2007 suicide bombing in Dellys revealed that al-Qaeda recruited children against their will. "He was just a kid. They are killing our children," said the mother of the 15-year-old bomber.

The suicide attacks have given fresh impetus to disagreements between those who support national reconciliation and those for whom justice comes before forgiveness.

Fatma-Zohra Flici, who chairs the national organisation for families of terrorist victims (ONFVT) insists, "National reconciliation is the only solution for constructing Algeria's future."

"The families who are victims of terrorism are ready to make further sacrifices for Algeria to blossom, for peace and stability in their country."

Other organisations representing victims' families disagree. "The Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation denies us the right to seek out the truth and to defend the memory of the victims," argues Chérifa Khedhar, who heads Djazaïrouna.

Victims have the right, Khedhar insists, "to truth, justice, remembrance and dignity".