Algeria rejects US report criticising human rights situation

Algeria has rejected a report released by the US State Department which criticises the status of human rights in the country, describing the report as “lacking credibility”, Turkey’s Anadolu agency has reported.

The Algerian foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its official website on Monday that: “the report recently issued by the US State Department on human rights practices in the world in 2014 with respect to Algeria is a mere extension of the bureaucratic trend that tends to clone and stereotype based on obsolete references, biased assessments and overly simplistic conclusions.”

The statement added that “these wrongful convictions have stripped the mentioned report of any credibility”.

The State Department included in its report on human rights practices for 2014 a chapter that described confrontations between Algerian security forces and armed jihadist groups in the 1990s.

The report, which criticises the human rights situation in Algeria, documents cases of arrest for demonstrators by security forces, including of journalists, who were covering sit-ins organised by activists who refused President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s presidential bid for a fourth term in 2014.

The report also describes “cases of torture in prisons, arbitrary arrests against protesters and protests by unemployed, as well as cases of falsification of the recent presidential elections’ results which took place in April, 2014 based on statements made by opponents.”