15 March 2006 :

Algeria, where no executions have taken place since 1993, intends to put an end to capital punishment. The statement was made via radio by Farouk Ksentini, chairman of the National Advisory Commission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights (CNCPPDH), adding that proposals to change the current law had been under examination by the Justice Ministry for several months. 
Delays to the changes were due to resistance by “some parties”.
According to Ksentini, abolition of the death penalty, “is an urgent measure essential for the constitution of a state based on rights”. Capital punishment is “totally absurd and has no effect on the reduction of crime”.
Ksentini hoped Algeria would be the first Arab state to abolish the death penalty. He recalled that no executions had taken place in the country since 1993 and that during his two tenures President Abdelaziz Bouteflika had pardoned over 200 prisoners.
On March 12 Algeria freed Abdelhak Layada, the jailed founder of the Islamic Armed Group, one of the most significant releases yet under a government amnesty aimed at ending more than a decade of civil war.
Abdelhak Layada -- also known as Abu Adlane -- was the leader of the group, known by its French initials GIA. He was arrested in 1993 in Morocco and had been sentenced to death.
The GIA was responsible for massacres of civilians during a period of strife that began in 1992 when the army cancelled elections that radical Islamists were set to win.
On March, 6 the government, which plans to release 2,629 Islamists, freed the deputy chairman of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Ali Belhadj, who had been detained for praising attacks by anti-US insurgents in Iraq.