ALGERIA: Algerian victims of French nuclear tests seek compensation

Record ID: 325751

  • Title: ALGERIA: Algerian victims of French nuclear tests seek compensation
  • Date: 19th February 2007
  • Summary: (BN09) UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION (FILE) (REUTERS) MAP SHOWING REGGANE SURROUNDED PROHIBITED AREA AROUND REGGANE.. ZOOM TO WORK 'REGGANE'.
  • Embargoed: 6th March 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Algeria
  • Country: Algeria
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAA6959O4UC7DKCNG7NP9RYRL1N
  • Story Text: Algerian victims of French nuclear tests in the 1960s will seek compensation through the United Nations' International Court of Justice.
    The statement was made recently by the head of the victims' organisation on the sidelines of a scientific seminar on the consequences of the nuclear test on Algeria.
    Sahara Mohamed Abdelhak Bendjebbar was quoted by French news agency AFP as saying that: "The Algerian victims will lodge a complaint with the International Court of Justice."
    Bendjebbar, who did not say when the complaint would be filed, claimed the tests had injured some 30,000 Algerians.
    France carried out 17 nuclear tests in the Sahara desert between 1960 and 1966, some of them under an agreement with the first Algerian government following independence in 1962.
    During the same conference Brahim Abbes, director of culture and history at the Ministry of War Veterans, said France should apologise for the tests which in its former colony Algeria which were an atrocious crime that harmed humans and the environment.
    Abbes said France had withheld information on the whereabouts of nuclear waste he said it had buried in the Sahara after the tests in Algeria's part of the desert.
    Abbes' statement was echoed by those who survived the tests.
    "I call on the French government to recognise what it has done, and to give us our rights. The French government must compensate us. You should know that the explosion has effected the environment, the animals and the humans. There are diseases that are plaguing our children. We call on the world to erase the atomic bomb from earth," said Ezzahi Salah, witness and survivor of the nuclear tests.
    Some French veterans have come back to the site , 45 years later, to write a report about the still existing radioactivity in the region.
    A former French soldier who completed his tour of duty in Reggane in 1960 and 1961 also called on France to atone for its actions.
    "My goal is to alert the opinion and make the perpetrators face their responsibilities so they admit they were guilty and repair and compensate the victims. The French nuclear tests cost an estimated 60 billion euros, I think we could give some money to the victims," said Michel Verger, ex-soldier and President of the French association of the nuclear tests's veterans.
    In Paris, the Foreign Ministry said it was a Defence Ministry issue. The Defence Ministry said there was no immediate comment.
    Algerian newspapers have said in recent days that radiation fallout produced by some of the tests had caused widespread illnesses that had never been properly documented.
    President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has repeatedly called on France to apologise for crimes committed during the colonial era to help improve bilateral ties with his nation of 33 million.
    He has demanded Paris admit its part in the massacre of 45,000 Algerians who took to the streets to demand independence as Europe celebrated victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
    French authorities have responded by urging "mutual respect" and saying it was up to historians to write history.
    The 1954-1962 independence war cost 1.5 million Algerian lives, the Algerian government says. Many French also died.
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