First Published 2002-12-23


Security forces checking bodies of alleged al-Qaeda members

 
Algerian army tracking al-Qaeda official

 
Alleged al-Qaeda member thought to have come to north of Algeria to meet with leader of main rebel group.

 
ALGIERS - The Algerian army has for several days tracked an alleged al-Qaeda member thought to have come to the north of the country to meet with a leader of a main rebel group, press reports said here Sunday.

The army has tracked the man, identified only as a Yemeni, in the bush near Bouira, a mountain town 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of the capital Algiers, according to articles in the Expression and El Khabar dailies.

Authorities believe the man came to Bouira to meet with Hassan Hattab, the leader of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), considered by the army to be the largest and the best-structured of Algeria's armed extremist groups and mostly active in the northeast of the country.

The man is believed to be a deputy of an al-Qaeda member, Emad Abdelwahid Ahmed Alwan, another Yemeni, who was killed by security forced in September and was thought to have been the member of Osama bin Laden's network responsible for North Africa.

Algeria, wracked by an Islamist insurgency since 1992, is one of the countries worried that it may become a new operations base for al-Qaeda now that its activities in Afghanistan have been severely curtailed by the US-led military effort there.

The GSPC and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) have been waging a campaign against Algeria's secular regime since 1992, when the army cancelled the second round of a general election that a fundamentalist party looked set to win.
PrintPrinter Friendly Version


Top

 Churches urge 'resistance' to Israeli settlements
 Nasrallah re-elected as head of Hezbollah
 When US soldiers, their families become expendable
 Iraq war curse deals final blow to Blair's EU bid
 Dubai economy growing at five percent pace
 Egyptians protest at Algeria's Cairo embassy
 US concerned about defininiton of 'aggression'
 A Death In Tehran, Or Unbounded Mythmaking?
 Getting Tough on Immigrant Exploitation
 Saudi Arabia’s Attack on Yemen