The last trip

On a bitterly cold December night in 2024, a heavy silence enveloped the municipality of Attaf in the state of Ghardaia, as if the earth was holding its breath waiting for a disaster. Inside a small car heading into the unknown, four innocent children, aged between four and eleven, sat laughing and talking about the outing their father had promised them. None of them knew that this would be their last trip.

At a quarter past three in the afternoon, the car stopped in front of an abandoned gas station. The father got out with strange calm, his eyes suspiciously wide as if they were soulless, and bought a bucket full of gasoline. The seller did not notice anything unusual, he looked like any other person. The father got back into the car and drove away from human sight, heading to a desolate, barren area, where the only sound was the intermittent howling of the wind.

There, among the shadows of the dry trees and amidst the silence that weighed down the heart, the features of the crime began to become clear. With slow, calculated steps, the father approached his children who were playing near the car. His face was frozen, featureless, as if a ghost had crept into his body. Suddenly, his hands reached out like a snake to strangle the first of them. The muffled screams and the astonished eyes of the other brothers made the scene even more brutal. One by one, they fell silently, as if the ground had swallowed their breath.

After he finished his heinous act, he carried the small bodies and placed them next to a sewer under construction. He stood for a few moments, contemplating the hideous scene, before slowly pouring gasoline on them, as if the scene had not been completed in his eyes. A small flame ignited the fire, and the bodies turned to ash under the glow of the rising flames. The scene was more like an endless nightmare, the screams of the flames echoing in the terrifying place as if calling for help.

The father returned home in the early hours of the morning. His face was calm as if nothing had happened, as if the hell he had left behind was just an illusion. At five in the morning, he stood in front of his wife and told her about his crime in a cold voice dripping with fear and indifference. The wife collapsed between tears and terror, but she did not hesitate to call the National Gendarmerie, reporting the horrific crime.

The gendarmes quickly moved to the site. When they arrived, the scene was like a crime scene from a horror movie: the smell of burning still lingered in the air, mixed with the smell of wet soil and burnt grass, charred bodies were scattered next to the drain, while dry trees stood like shadows witnessing the tragedy. The scene was beyond human endurance, and made even the most experienced investigators remain silent, while their eyes seemed to reflect an indelible shock.

The necessary investigations were carried out, and the victims were identified using forensic techniques. During his interrogation, the father confessed to all the details of the crime, and justified his action with “psychological pressures,” explaining that he was suffering from accumulating debts and family disputes that made him feel suffocated and out of control of his life. However, his words seemed to darken the scene, unable to justify the brutality of the act. How could the pressures of life justify such brutality? How could a human being be transformed into a merciless being in such a way?

Charges of premeditated murder, torture, brutal acts, and assassination were brought forward. Justice is now the only recourse for the children who were lost, and for a society that will never forget this tragedy.

The crime sparked a storm of anger and condemnation. The Algerian street rose up, and citizens demanded the maximum punishment for the perpetrator, stressing that what happened was not only a crime against childhood, but against all of humanity. The scene of the burning fire and the bodies of children will remain engraved in memory, witnessing the most heinous type of betrayal: the betrayal of fatherhood. While cries of anger rose in the Algerian street, eyes continued to overflow with tears, absorbing the tragedy that shook the foundations of the entire society.