`You go mad or you leave or you die'

TERRORIST bombs have been making the headlines in France this week, not just the one at Canary Wharf, but also the much more …

TERRORIST bombs have been making the headlines in France this week, not just the one at Canary Wharf, but also the much more devastating" series of explosions that broke the apparent truce in the Algerian civil war.

The French watched with dread the conflagration in their former colony which left 20 dead, fearful that the terror wreaked by Islamists might return to their own streets as it did last year.

But no one here felt mare keenly Sunday's attack on the Algiers press centre than the exiled Algerian journalists who fled to France to escape death, and now feel guilt and despair as they watch their former colleagues die.

The attack on the former army bunker which was supposed to offer security to three privately owned Algerian newspapers killed three journalists the editor of the tabloid daily, Le Soir d'Algerie, a cartoonist and a man who looked after Le Soir's puzzles page. So far, over 60 journalists and media staffs' have been killed by Islamists in a civil war which has caused an estimated 50,000 deaths.

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Since journalists became a target of the Islamists' had in May 1993, more than 200 have fled to often uneasy exile abroad, most of them to France. "There are many more who want to leave, but it's become very difficult to obtain a visa," explained Mr Karim Ait Oumediane, who came to Paris 21/2 years ago.

The short lived euphoria after the election of the former general, President Liamine Zeroual, last November had almost persuaded some exiled journalists to return, he said. "But the President has done nothing, and now everything seems to have broken down."

More than ever, Algeria's remaining journalists find themselves caught in a double bind death threats from the Islamists on one side, who accuse them of being "mouthpieces" of the military regime, and on the other increasing censorship from the government.

"Since last week, the regime has even set up censors' committees at the printing presses, Mr Oumediane said. "If they don't like an article, they can throw it out, or even bin the whole edition.

"Now it has become even more difficult to be a journalist in Algeria, but there are still those who stay because they feel it is their duty."

He was a political reporter on the daily newspaper, El Watan. One night the police came to his home. After a gun battle with Islamists, they had found a hit list on one of the dead guerrillas. It included his name, address and photograph, together with well informed details about his daily movements. They advised him to leave.

Exile, he says, has at least given him a valuable perspective on the conflict. "When you are there, you are caught up in the turmoil, you react in a very emotive way to events. Now I see things with a certain realism."

He is convinced that there must be a negotiated settlement. But he fears that the scale of corruption at official level means that many in power benefit from the state of emergency and have no wish to change it.

Another exile to Paris, Samia (not her real name), almost broke down as she described her life here. "The worst thing is to go through your personal address book and see names which have to be erased because they have been killed."

She has been in France for a year after fleeing her home in Algiers and a long established career as a radio journalist. She, too, learned that her name figured on an Islamist hit list.

COPIES of such black lists are often sent to newsrooms to cause terror. Or they are pinned up on walls near mosques to inspire the faithful to commit murder.

"They believe without question that if they kill me, or someone like me, their souls will go straight to paradise," Samia said. "When you are there, you reach the point where you hope that at least you will be shot dead, and not abducted then raped and tortured. Or that you won't be killed in front of your parents."

Allaoua Bousseksou was a cinema critic before life under threat of death became so unbearable that he came to Paris 15 months ago. He had spent months avoiding assassins by living in his car, or in fortified hotels provided by the government for journalists.

"Everything closes in until you have a purely biological existence," he said. "Either you go Wad, or you leave, or you die.