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Mr Zoubir Kaf, a 70 year old father of four left his family home in Laghouat on the 17th of July 2011 at 6.30am and has not been seen since.
 
That day he was meant to be meeting some friends, several of whom tried to reach him at his family home when they noticed that he did not turn up. The following day, the 18th of July, seeing that her husband had not returned, his wife began asking questions at the local station and the police station of the Benaceur-Benchohra area (Laghouat).
Several days after his disappearance, she received a visit from a member of the Military who informed her that her husband was being held on the premises at the Department of Intelligence and Security (DRS) barracks and that he had been subject to physical abuse. The individual also asked her not to reveal his identity as he ran the risk of reprisals for revealing such information to her.

After several months of enquiries, the victim's wife went to see Laghouat Court's Prosecutor of the Republic to lodge a complaint about his disappearance and to inform the magistrate that despite her persistence, it seemed that the security services had not taken any real steps to find her husband.

The Prosecutor then told that her she had no reason to worry and that her husband was still alive; he seemed to be aware of the details of the case. Because of this, the victim's wife stopped her search awaiting her husband's freedom, or at least for him to be called before a judge if he was accused of a crime.

At the end of July 2012, Mrs Kaf once again received a visit from a member of the military claiming to work in the Ouargla barracks, saying it was his humanitarian duty to inform her that her husband was still detained, in secret, in the security services' barracks.

Alkarama joins Mrs Kaf in her very real fears for her husband's life; he is a seventy year old man who has been held in secret for over a year in the DRS barracks in the Tazegrart region of Ouargla.

It is important to note that the local security services arrested that same year another individual, Mr Boukhalfa, a citizen of Ouargla, to try and extort money from him after having savagely tortured him in those very same barracks.

Today our organisation urgently called upon the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to intervene in favour of Mr Kaf, without delay, and put pressure on the Algerian authorities to immediately free him and to guarantee his physical safety.