Abdelmadjid Zaalani: France Must Lift the Secrecy of Nuclear Tests in Algeria

Algeria must make more efforts to lift its demands and hold France accountable, under the report prepared by three rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council addressed to the French government in a 14-page letter in September 2024, Professor Abdelmadjid Zaalani, President of the National Council for Human Rights said.

The letter demanded that the French government expedite the delivery of maps and declassify all the nuclear tests and explosions that took place in the Algerian Sahara in the 1960s, Zaalani added.

During an interview, on Tuesday, on the “Guest of the International” program of Algeria’s International Radio, on the anniversary of these nuclear explosions, Zaalani explained that the most dangerous thing about this case is that the colonial authorities used Algerians, as if they were rats, during these experiments, which included many prisoners who were transferred from a prison in the city of Sidi Bel Abbès (western Algeria), which proves the falsity of the French claims that they took place in a barren and uninhabited desert.

The Algerian International Radio guest revealed that France has not yet responded to the content of this letter despite the great insistence of the UN Human Rights Council, which called on France to acknowledge responsibility and apologize for these tests and explosions. Over the past decades, these experiments and explosions have caused severe damage to humans and the environment and extended their effects to the countries of West Africa and the Mediterranean Basin. The nuclear dust has even reached some areas in Spain.

The chairman of the Human Rights National Council confirmed that “the report addressed to France included demands for the necessity of lifting military secrecy about the locations of these explosions and revealing all the areas covered by these tests, considering them crimes against humanity and taking the initiative to compensate those affected, under the 2021 law amending the “Morin” law of 2010 to facilitate and expand the conditions for compensation for thousands of affected people.”

He added that “there is an appeal from the UN Human Rights Council to France to initiate a long-term plan to clear these nuclear sites of radiation to ensure a clean environment in the Algerian desert by transferring the advanced technology it possesses and that of the other major nuclear powers.”

Pr Zaalani stressed that Algeria must expand the discussion on this issue with the French side within the framework of memory based on the report prepared by the UN Human Rights Council, even though the circumstances are not favourable at this stage given the escalation carried out by the far right in France against Algeria, which is primarily responsible politically and historically for these explosions during the colonial period.

Zaalani concluded that “Algeria can exploit its current term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council to raise this issue again before the end of this term on December 31, and there are other mechanisms that can be resorted to within the framework of international law, including the International Criminal Court and the European Court of Justice.”