CCPR/C/128/D/2819/2016 State party on 12 December 1989. The author is represented by counsel, Nassera Dutour, of the Collectif des familles de disparu(e)s en Algérie. 1.2 On 18 September 2018, the Committee, acting through its Special Rapporteur on new communications and interim measures, decided not to consider the admissibility of the communication separately from the merits. The facts as submitted by the author 2.1 At about 11.30 a.m. on 13 November 1995, Abdelhakim Houari was walking with a friend near his neighbourhood (Hai El Badr, in Oran) when a blue van stopped alongside them, with two plain-clothes police officers inside. One of the officers jumped on Abdelhakim Houari and forced him into the van. Everything happened so quickly that his friend was unable to intervene. The customers in the nearby bakery also watched helplessly as he was arrested, and they immediately informed his mother of what had happened. Since that day, he has never been seen again. 2.2 Before this incident, Hai El Badr was a very peaceful neighbourhood. No acts of terrorism, nor even any police searches or arrests, had been carried out there. This arrest came as a surprise to everyone because Abdelhakim Houari was a very quiet boy without any political affiliation, who attended the local mosque and was involved in the work of a charity. 2.3 On 13 November 1995, as soon as she learned of her son’s disappearance, the author wrote to the Prosecutor General at Oran Court of Justice and hurried to the Cité Petit gendarmerie station, then to the Hai El Badr gendarmerie station and the Dar el Beïda military barracks in Oran. All the gendarmes and soldiers to whom she spoke denied being involved in her son’s detention or detaining him on their premises. Twenty days later, on 2 December 1995, three young men who were involved in the same charity as Abdelhakim Houari were arrested by the security forces and imprisoned at the Dar el Beïda military barracks. One of them was released after six months and the other two were released on 28 May 1997, after being tried on charges of unlawful activities based solely on the fact that the charity was not legally recognized. All of them told the author that they had seen Abdelhakim Houari many times at the Dar el Beïda military barracks. They said that he was psychologically very low and they thought he had remained at the barracks for at least seven months. 2.4 The author did all that she could to find her son by visiting the Dar el Beïda military barracks regularly until, one day, some soldiers ordered her to stay away, threatening reprisals against her and her family. As a result of the terror that reigned in the country during the 1990s, she waited for almost two years before filing a complaint with the judicial authorities.1 Indeed, according to persistent rumours, if a family drew too much attention to the disappearance of a relative, the disappeared person would be executed and the authorities would blame the murder on terrorists. 2.5 On 20 September 1997, the author wrote to the prosecutor attached to the Oran court of first instance to request that he open an investigation into her son’s disappearance and to submit the information communicated by the young men who had been arrested and detained at the Dar el Beïda military barracks with her son. Her letter went unanswered. On 19 August 1998, the author and a group of mothers of disappeared persons requested a lawyer to file a complaint on their behalf with the court. No action was taken in response to the complaint. On 31 May 2000, she wrote again to the prosecutor, requesting an investigation into her son’s disappearance and complaining about the prosecutor’s failure to respond. To this day, she has received no reply. 2.6 On 13 July 2008, the author received from the Oran criminal investigation police a death certificate concerning Abdelhakim Houari, which stated that an investigation had shown that he had joined the armed groups on 24 November 1995 and had later died in the maquis. The author refused to believe the information given in the certificate, especially as a friend of her son’s and customers in the bakery had witnessed her son being forced into the blue van. Furthermore, the three young men detained later in the Dar el Beïda military barracks had confirmed having seen him there over the course of several months. The author 1 2 Complaints attached to the case file. GE.20-12768