Word: serkadji
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...Terrified civilians whisper of special execution brigades, dressed in civilian clothes, that roam the country hunting down and murdering Islamists. City residents say police patrols have fired at random into civilian crowds after being ambushed. In February, the same month in which the government quelled a riot in the Serkadji prison by killing more than 96 prisoners-Islamists say the toll was more than 200-the village of Belhacene, halfway between Algiers and the Moroccan border, was flattened by government helicopters, according to rebels. As many as 200 were reportedly killed...
...slaughter was swift and sure. After prisoners at Serkadji, Algiers' Alcatraz, used sharpened metal bed slats to slit the throats of four guards and attempted a mass escape, government security forces--the Ninjas, as they are called--swept into the prison. When they were done with their work, at least 96 inmates, most of them Muslim militants, lay dead...
...prison massacre was the most deadly confrontation yet in what Western journalists have called Algeria's ``hidden war,'' the violent campaign begun three years ago by Islamist factions against the military-dominated government that they accuse of stealing their legitimate power. The events at Serkadji prove just how much the conflict has become a virtual civil...
...grisly slashing of throats--the method of murder favored by Islamist militants--has instilled terror in the country's collective psyche. But Serkadji prison is also symbolic: it became infamous during the 1954-62 war of independence as the place where French forces tortured, imprisoned and guillotined Algerian guerrillas. Today it is where the government holds 1,000 of as many as 30,000 Islamists reportedly jailed around the country. One former inmate told TIME he had been held for six weeks of solitary confinement in a dark, rat-infested underground cell, tormented by two prison guards...
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