 The founder and former leader of Algeria's largest Muslim group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), was executed last year by his former aides, L'Expression newspaper reported Tuesday. Hassan Hattab was killed in the northeastern Kabylie region after being tried and found guilty of "treason and heresy" by his former right-hand men, who then took control of the GSPC, wrote the newspaper. "With my own eyes, I saw him dead, lying in a pool of blood, killed after being shot several times in the head and chest at point-blank range," L'Expression quoted a former GSPC member, who has since quit the group, as saying.
| "Then we mutilated the body and jumped up and down on the pieces. That's 'cuz we're devout Muslims..." |
The GSPC, which has said it is opposed to the killing of civilians, the main victims of the civil war, has become Algeria's best structured and largest insurgency, but like the GIA, it has rejected national reconciliation overtures from President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's government.
| That's because, unlike the GIA, it's not virtually wiped out... |
Hattab's enemies within the GSPC, including the group's second-in-command, Amari Saifi, better known as Abderrezak the Para, and his successor at the head of the group, Nabil Sahraoui, reproached him for having "negotiated with the Algerian authorities," L'Expression said. |