High international oil prices have emboldened Algeria to make a u-turn on earlier attempts at liberalising the sector. Algeria, which was a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), has slapped a windfall tax on surplus profits as well as curtailed the role of foreign investors in oil production in a set of new amendments for the sector. The new provisions require that state-owned Sonatrach, Africa’s largest company by revenue, take a mandatory minimum 51 percent stake in all exploration and production ventures.

Amnesty was extended to jailed suspects as well as those at large. A six-month amnesty offered by Algeria to Islamic militants on condition of surrender expires on Monday (August 28). There have been calls for an extension since fewer than 300 have come forward. Militants have been promised immunity from prosecution provided they have not been involved in serious crimes such as massacres, rapes and bombings.

Early one morning in April, a desperate young Algerian man slipped into a warehouse on the outskirts of Algiers and sealed himself inside a shipping container destined for France. The guard he had bribed to let him into the warehouse begged him to reconsider. Every year, tens of thousands of impoverished Africans lured by Europe's prosperity risk their lives attempting to reach the continent illegally. European Union officials estimate the number doubled this year, though they have no firm figures.

Beatings, electric shocks and the forced ingestion of dirty water, urine and or chemicals are just some of the methods that continue to be used by Algeria's security forces with systematic impunity, Amnesty International revealed in a report published today, (July 13).

Algeria's security forces continue to detain and torture prisoners secretly, Amnesty International said on Monday (July 10) in a report ahead of the Algerian president's trip to London. The human rights group said Algeria's intelligence agency, the Department of Information and Security (DRS), is using the war on terror as an excuse to perpetuate torture and ill-treatment.

Two men, deported to Algeria from the UK, have failed to contact their families on their return. Concern about the men is now mounting after security services in Algeria confirmed that they had arrived, were being held in custody, but gave no other details.

In years gone by, Algerians who used the term "women's work" would probably have been referring to tasks such as weaving, the manufacture of terra cotta pots, and the production of traditional cakes. Custom in this predominantly Muslim country of North Africa ensured that women were first and foremost wives and homemakers. But, no longer.

In Algeria, the good news is that citizens no longer live in fear of being butchered by Islamist militants at makeshift roadblocks, or of being "disappeared" by hooded policemen who break down their front doors. But after turning the corner on a conflict between government forces and Islamist rebels that claimed more than 100,000 lives, mostly civilian, since 1992, Algeria is moving toward less, not more, freedom. The extraordinarily broad new "law implementing the charter on peace and national reconciliation" makes this clear. Never before has a government, in the guise of healing a nation after a fratricidal war, threatened to impose such heavy punishments on those who dare to pose critical questions about the past.

The Algerian regulator ARPT took the brave step of allowing 24 ISPs an experimental licence at the end of April 2004. After the revision its licensing framework, the first VoIP operator (EEPAD) was granted authorization to operate a year later in April 2005. Russell Southwood reports on how this legalisation has begun to transform the market.

A presidential decree in Algeria will consecrate impunity for crimes under international law and other human rights abuses, and even muzzle open debate by criminalizing public discussion about the nation’s decade-long conflict, four human rights groups cautioned. The organizations are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Center for Transitional Justice, and the International Federation for Human Rights.

Floods that uprooted 50,000 refugees are a reminder that the world urgently needs to solve Africa's longest-running territorial dispute, the leader of the Western Sahara independence movement has said. Heavy rains over the past few days washed away the homes of about 50,000 of the 158,000 refugees who have lived in desert camps near the Algerian town of Tindouf for 30 years since fleeing the disputed Western Sahara territory.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said it is mounting an emergency operation to assist around 50,000 refugees in Algeria, after their homes and shelters in three refugee camps were washed away by torrential rains. In a statement from Algeria, UNHCR said it was planning an airlift of around 12,000 tents, 7,000 kitchen sets, 60,000 blankets and other living essentials to the camps, which house Sahrawi refugees who fled Western Sahara in 1975.

The International Federation of Journalists has condemned a new series of "regular" prison sentences handed down by the Algiers Tribunal every Tuesday against journalists. On 24 May, Ali Dilem, the cartoonist of the daily Liberté was charged with a fine of fifty thousand dinars (approximately 550 euros) "with an offence against the President of the Republic". Mustapha Hammouche, another columnist working for Liberté who is also being pursued for the same "offence", has been acquitted. The former managing editor of Liberté, Farid Alilet, was falsely sentenced to one year in prison and the newspaper was fined 250 thousand dinars (approximately 2850 euros).

The General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) has launched a nationwide campaign to organise women, the priority target group being women in the textile sector. Alongside this organising drive, the UGTA is also leading a campaign against sexual harassment and a campaign for the revision of Algeria's family code, as executive member Souad Charid explains.

After a decade of civil war between government forces and islamist extremist groups, violence in Algeria has decreased significantly over the past few years. Between 1992 and 2002, fighting and attacks targeting the civil population forced large numbers of Algerians to flee rural areas and find security in nearby urban centres. The actual number of people displaced during the civil war is difficult to assess given the information void that has pervaded the conflict in Algeria since its onset.

Algerian authorities have debarred a delegation of the International Union for Human Rights Associations from visiting the country by sending it back from the Algiers International Airport. The joint delegation from the IUHRA, the European-Mediterranean Network for Human Rights, and the Cairo-based Human Rights Research Institute was denied access to visit Algeria.

Algeria's government has failed to take needed measures to protect women from rape, beatings and widespread legal and economic discrimination, Amnesty International told a U.N. panel on Monday. "The government of Algeria has shown a lack of political will to ensure that women are protected from violence," it said in a report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

Reporters sans frontières has urged the Algerian justice system to put an end to its harassment of "Le Matin" editor Mohammed Benchicou, who is already serving a two-year sentence and could now be convicted in two or possibly three separate libel cases on 7 December 2004. "With close to 50 cases [pending], with one trial after another, one lawsuit after another, hearings adjourned by judges and incomprehensible legal manoeuvres, Benchicou's legal ordeal is on a par with the absurdities and nightmarish procedures of the bureaucratic and partisan judicial system described in Franz Kafka's 'The Trial'," RSF said. (French version available through the link below)

The African Union has opened in Algeria a regional research centre aimed at combating terrorism on the continent. AU commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konanre said the centre in the capital Algiers would beef up AU member states' collective efforts to fight terrorism. Mr Konare also said the AU was working with international institutions to eradicate "a universal threat". AU delegates are also holding talks in Algiers, which has itself been the focus of attacks by militant Islamists.

Ministers and representatives from Governments participating in the Western Mediterranean Dialogue on Migration, also known as the "5+5 Dialogue" are meeting on 15 and 16 September in Algiers to work on regional cooperative approaches in the field of migration management. The event, organized by the Government of Algeria in close partnership with the International Organization for Migration, will allow participants from Algeria, France, Italy, Libya, Malta, Mauritania, Morocco, Portugal, Spain and Tunisia to follow up on the "Tunis Declaration", adopted in October 2002 by participating ministers.