Khaled Nezzar, a wily, outspoken Algerian general and former defense minister who played a central role in the bloodshed that marked his troubled country’s passage out of the 20th century, died on Dec. 29 in Algiers. He was 86.
His death was confirmed by his son Lotfi in a telephone interview from Algiers, the capital.
General Nezzar, who at his death was under indictment in Switzerland for war crimes and crimes against humanity, was a key player in the most traumatic episodes of his country’s recent history.
Spoken of sparingly in Algeria — in 2006 it became a criminal offense to “instrumentalize the wounds of national tragedy” — this bloody history and the country’s refusal to acknowledge it have contributed to its continuing isolation from its North African neighbors and the Middle East.
General Nezzar, who was given a hero’s burial at a state funeral in Algiers that was attended by the prime minister, was at the center of the story.
As the head of the army in October 1988, he ordered troops and tanks into Algiers to put down an uprising of young people enraged over deteriorating living conditions and egged on by Muslim fundamentalists. At least 500 people were killed in Algiers’ narrow streets.
“The army was given free rein to shoot into the crowds and to torture arrested prisoners,” Martin Evans, a historian, and John Phillips, a journalist, wrote in the book “Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed” (2007).
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