Motorola supplying Algerian authorities with $6m worth of Irish-made two-way radios

Irish-made communications equipment is helping the Algerian security forces carry out their brutal repression of the six-year-old armed Islamist rebellion.

Ms Inge Walage, a spokeswoman for Motorola, confirmed that the company sells two-way radio systems to the Algerian Interior Ministry. "We do manufacture two-way radios in Ireland," she said, "but they could come from one of our other facilities."

She declined to provide details about the quantity and price of the equipment sold, but an industry source said the walkie-talkies sold to Algeria are indeed made in Ireland. About 2,000 of the voice-encrypted sets are shipped to the Interior Ministry in Algiers every year, at a price of about $6 million.

The radios are the standard means of communication for police and gendarmes in Algeria, where suspected fundamentalists are often killed on sight during patrols, and those detained are tortured. A US State Department report issued on January 30th said serious human rights abuses continue in Algeria and security forces routinely torture prisoners.

Only yesterday an Algerian prosecutor confirmed that Mr Kamel Nachef, an activist from the secular Rally for Culture and Democracy, died after being shot in police custody.

Ms Walage said Motorola complies with the US Department of Trade list. "Algeria is not on that list, and we believe that our presence has a positive effect," she said. But wasn't Motorola aware that the Algerian police, the company's clients, torture on a large scale? "I know, I know," Ms Walage replied. "This is one of the difficult things . . . Motorola is a business that wants to make a profit, to provide employment."

Nine members of the European Parliament who left Algiers yesterday after a five-day visit are apparently afflicted by a similar lack of moral fibre. In front of television cameras, the MEPs tore up a letter handed to them by a human rights lawyer because it was written by leaders of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).

"We reached an agreement with the Algerian authorities not to contact the leaders of the ex-FIS on national territory," the German Green representative, Mr Daniel Cohn-Bendit, explained.

The French MEP, Mr Andre Soulier, head of the delegation, said questions about the alleged involvement of Algerian security forces in massacres had been "brushed aside" during their visit. He refused to comment when Algerian police broke up a peace rally with batons yesterday. Police - no doubt equipped with Motorola radios - arrested 10 marchers, roughed up journalists and seized film from cameras.

But the MEPs' craven compliance with the wishes of the regime did not endear them to their hosts. "Good riddance," said an editorial in L'Authentique, the newspaper which speaks for Gen Mohamed Betchine, one of Algiers' strongmen.

The departure of the MEPs was marked by three bombs in the capital, which killed at least two people and wounded 28 others. A fourth explosion in a public bath in the eastern town of Skikda seriously burned 20 women, and Algiers newspapers yesterday reported that security forces killed 21 armed Islamists.

The Ireland-Algeria Solidarity Group last night condemned "the reported conclusions" of the MEPs. "Instead of demanding an international investigation into the continuing human rights abuses in Algeria, they have asked for the lifting of the arms embargo for the Algerian government, which Amnesty International has accused of `abdicating its responsibilities for law and order'," said the group.