Former Algerian defense minister General Khaled Nezzar, who played a key role in preventing an Islamic party from coming to power in 1992, has spoken out against terrorism, saying it is "everyone's business."
"It is in the interest of modern societies and those who wish to become modern societies, to join together to combat this evil of the third millennium," Nezzar told the Algerian daily La Nouvelle Republique.
Nezzar was a hard-line senior figure in the Algerian government that cancelled elections in 1992 which the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was poised to win -- a move blamed for the onset of the campaign of massacres attributed to the militant Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
The former minister, who has been accused in France of presiding over systemic torture when he was head of the country's armed forces, said on Saturday that European countries also suffered from harboring terrorists.
He condemned "certain European countries" for "shedding crocodile tears" while harboring terrorists themselves.
He said Britain in particular suffered from this rhetoric, accusing the government there of harboring GIA bases which give orders to rebels operating within Algeria -- ALGIERS (AFP)
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