Zaalani: France To Face 15 Questions About Its Crimes in Algeria

The President of the National Council for Human Rights, Abdelmadjid Zaalani, said that France must acknowledge its nuclear crimes in the Algerian Sahara before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next May. After being questioned about this issue, the list of countries demanding explanations about these crimes has expanded in conjunction with its appearance before the UN Human Rights Council during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session.

While supervising the work of a forum on “Crimes of French colonialism resulting from nuclear tests and explosions in the Algerian desert in the balance of human rights standards”, hosted on Sunday by the Faculty of Law of Djilali Liabés University in Sidi Bel Abbés (western Algeria), Zaalani explained that the UN Council for Human Rights in Geneva is the largest international human rights institution affiliated with the United Nations, directly questioned France last September about the nuclear explosions it carried out in the city of Reggane and the neighbouring desert areas in southern Algeria.

Adding that the three rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council, the first in charge of the elderly, his colleague in charge of justice and truth, and the third in charge of nuclear tests and their effects on humans and the environment, directed more than 15 questions to France about its crimes resulting from the atomic explosions it committed in the region. France must answer all of them and thus acknowledge its crimes by next May, the speaker added, which is the date set by the UNHR Council for France to comply with accountability during the Universal Periodic Review.

Zaalani explained on this occasion that it would be an opportunity to force France to admit that it carried out nuclear explosions and not just tests, to provide a map of these explosions and to commit to cleaning up the nuclear pollution that has occurred so far in the region due to the shifting sands while compensating all those affected in the Algerian desert.

Zallani stressed that the so-called Morin Law in France, issued on January 5, 2010, granted the right to compensation to only two people, due to the impossible conditions it set to deprive all those affected of their right to compensation, including the condition that the affected person be a resident of that area and still is, and prove that the damages he/she suffered were caused by nuclear tests, and today it is trying to remedy that through a draft law that has been under discussion since 2021, according to the same source.