Sûreté Nationale (Algeria)

Directorate General for National Security المديرية العامة للأمن الوطني
Badge of the National Police.
Agency overview
Formed	1962
Jurisdictional structure
National agency	Algeria
Operations jurisdiction	Algeria
Governing body	Cabinet of Algeria
General nature	• Local civilian agency
Operational structure
Overviewed by	Direction générale de la police nationale
Headquarters	Algiers, Algeria
Website
Official website

The Directorate General for National Security (Arabic: المديرية العامة للأمن الوطني‎ (also DGNS, The Sûreté Nationale, or The Sûreté) is the civil police of Algeria. It polices Algeria's larger cities and urban areas. The Sûreté is part of the Ministry of Interior and is charged with maintaining law and order, protecting life and property, investigating crimes, and apprehending offenders. It also performs other routine police functions, including traffic control.

The Sûreté is headed by a Director General and in 2007 consisted of a force of 130,000 and is believed to be organized along the lines of the National Police, with operational and investigative branches and supporting services.

The Judicial Police branch is responsible for criminal investigations, working in close coordination with the Office of the Public Prosecutor in the Ministry of Justice. Police are assigned to the capitals of the wilayat are under the nominal control of the individual governors. A special riot police force is equipped with modern riot-control gear. Although the police were able to cope with urban disturbances and violence during the early and mid-1980s, the military had to be called in to help quell the severe riots in late 1988.

Elements of the Sûreté Nationale also play a role in countering threats to the government arising from political subversion. The Sûreté assigns police contingents to work with customs inspectors at legal points of entry to control illegal activities. Their main concerns are apprehending undesirable immigrants and contraband traffickers. The Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) is the Algerian state intelligence service. It is separate from Directorate General for National Security and was an active player in the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s.

M9 Berreta

 This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/.