Tunisia dissolves secret agency as Algeria police take to the streets

Monday, March 7 2011

Tunisia's interim government has announced it is dissolving the country's secret police service.

The agency had been widely accused of committing human rights abuses during the rule of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted on January 14.

Interim Prime Minister Caid Essebsi has also announced a new government, which includes 22 ministers.

The interim government is running Tunisia until elections scheduled to take place on July 24.

In Algeria, thousands of community policemen rallied on Monday to demand a pay raise, breaking through heavy security to reach parliament in a rare mass show of dissent in the tightly controlled country.

Security units

The protesters, estimated by organizers to number more than 10,000, braved a ban on demonstrations in the capital and pushed through several police cordons to move from Martyrs Square to the National Assembly.

They were quickly surrounded by regular police dispatched to the scene of the protest.

Algeria's community policemen, a force numbering about 94,000, provide police services in the country's villages in a program set up in 1994 when the government was battling Islamist rebel groups.

Source: Africa Review.
Link: http://www.africareview.com/News/Tunisia+dissolves+secret+police+agency/-/979180/1120598/-/8mrvhoz/-/.