Algeria lifts 1992 emergency decree, state news agency says

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- Algeria's government declared an end to a nearly two-decade state of emergency Tuesday, its state news agency announced, lifting restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly imposed to combat an Islamist insurgency.

The country's Council of Ministers approved the repeal Tuesday, the state-run Algeria Press Service reported. "The draft ordinance will come into force upon its imminent publication in the Official Journal," the council said in a statement carried by the agency.

The move comes as Algeria, like other Arab nations, faces a wave of protest that has toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia and led to open revolt in against longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi in neighboring Libya. Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced this month that he would soon lift the emergency declaration, first imposed in 1992 and indefinitely renewed in 1993.

The emergency declaration was part of a clampdown on Islamist movements during a civil war that left more than 150,000 dead. But critics say the insurgency has long since diminished, and the law remained only to muzzle critics of the government.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/02/22/algeria.emergency/index.html?hpt=T2

It allows the state to pick up any citizen and disappear them. All suspects of the state have no rights.

Sounds like the Patriot Act.