A boy holds up photos of his disappeared family

ALGIERS, Algeria (CNN) -- The parents may never know if their son is dead, or why he might have been killed. All they can say for certain is that one year ago, soldiers stormed into their home, held a gun to the father's head and took away his son. Months passed with no word on his fate. Then, only a rumor to fuel their worst fears: Their son had been killed in detention.

"I want justice to be done, not just for my son, but for all of us," the father told CNN. "You can't just storm into people's homes in the middle of the night and take people away like that."

His call for action is just one voice in a growing chorus of grieving families whose loved ones have disappeared. International human rights groups claim as many as 2,000 people have vanished at the hands of security forces in the Algerian government's war on Islamic extremists. Algerian human rights activists say the number is much higher.

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Bob Coen reports from Algiers
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No one knows why seemingly ordinary people were taken away, nor whether most are still alive. They can only assume the government suspected their loved ones were connected to Islamic rebels, and disposed of them without a trial.

"Give us back our children -- show them to us!" cried the daughter of one of the disappeared. "Let us know where they are, if they're dead or alive!"

Families of the missing have organized months of public demonstrations, hoping to pressure the Algerian government to investigate their cases. They display photographs of the victims, putting a human face on their unexplained tragedy. In the sea of snapshots, a child mourns his dead father and brother, and searches for any trace of his mother and a second brother.

Some families have consulted with a small group of lawyers trying to take legal action against the authorities.

Human rights lawyer Moustapha Bouchachi and his colleagues have compiled nearly 2,000 files on the disappeared. Some include eyewitness accounts identifying security personnel, and the time and place of the incidents. Despite their work, no case has gone to court, a fact that leads Bouchachi to believe the disappearances were sanctioned at the highest level.

"When it happens like that -- when you do write to the authorities, to the justice department, about those facts, and they don't do anything, we realized that it's the general policy of the government of Algeria," Bouchachi said.

The government claims many of the missing have simply left to join Islamic rebel groups, which have been fighting to overthrow the government since 1992. More than 50,000 civilians have been killed in gruesome rebel attacks in the last six years.

Hundreds of people seek news of missing family members

"It's not a policy of the state to use violations of human rights to maintain power; it's just not true to say that," said Algerian Human Rights Commissioner Mohammed Rezzag-Bara. "We have problems, but the first one is the problem of killing citizens by these awful armed groups. That is the first concern for human rights."

Bouchachi believes the government has targeted the wrong people in its attempt to crush the rebels.

"This is not war against terrorists," he said. "When you have hundreds, thousands of people arrested, executed by the security forces, it's not a way for a state of law to fight terrorists. In the end, the victims of this violence are innocent people who've got nothing to do with politics."

Despite their setbacks, the victims' families say they'll never give up their quest to determine what happened to their loved ones.

"It's hope that keeps us going," one father said. "Otherwise, we have no wish to go on."

Correspondent Bob Coen contributed to this report.