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| Africa: North |
| Algeria Says GSPC Days Are Numbered |
| 2005-01-14 |
| Algerian authorities are mopping up the main extremist group responsible for the deaths of dozens of people, having wiped out another movement, Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni said in an interview published yesterday. "There are a few remaining pockets" of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), "which we are losing no time in putting out of action," Zerhouni told the government daily El Moudjahid. The GSPC has become the principal extremist group in Algeria's Islamist rebellion that has left some 150,000 people dead since 1992. It was allegedly founded on the instructions of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. It has effectively taken over from the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), once considered the deadliest radical movement fighting the secular authorities, but declared by the authorities last week to have been smashed. Zerhouni said only between some ten and 20 GIA members remained, nearly ten having been killed in recent days. According to authorities the GSPC has between 300 and 500 members. Earlier this month some 50 of its fighters reportedly killed 18 people in an ambush of an army convoy south of Algiers. Nine armed Islamists were killed a week later in the same region by the army, reports said. The group was linked to the kidnapping last year of 32 European tourists, most of them Germans, in southern Algeria. Some were freed in a raid by Algerian soldiers, but the rest were forced to trek across the desert into neighboring Mali, before they were eventually released, allegedly in exchange for a ransom. One of the hostages, a German woman, died in captivity. When the GSPC emerged in 1998, it was led by Hassan Hattab, now reported to be dead. His successor Nabil Sahraoui was killed by aides in June and the movement is today headed by Abou Mossaab Abdelouadoud, whose real name is Abdelmalek Dourkdal. Howver observers believe the GSPC group responsible for Monday's attack was backed by militants from other regions and is led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who security forces say recently returned to Algeria after going into hiding in Mali. L'Expression newspaper said that following the arrest in October of the radical group's number two leader, Amari Saifi, who was handed over by Libya, Belmokhtar has rallied hard-line members of the GSPC who have managed to survive in the south of the country thanks to smuggling and drug trafficking. The GSPC, which includes well-trained army deserters, concentrates its attacks on the security forces. The GIA is held responsible for the massacres of civilians in the name of what its leaders saw as a war to enforce compliance with strict Shariah in a secular state. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 I'm gonna miss 'em. Prolly the only accurately named faction of assholes anywhere ever. *sniff* |
| Posted by: .com 2005-01-14 5:35:33 PM |