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ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian militants killed five civilians, including a mayor, stepping up attacks days after the start of an amnesty for rebels aimed at ending more than a decade of strife, residents and newspapers said on Saturday. Suspected members of al Qaeda-linked group the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) shot dead mayor Brahim Jellab outside his house on Friday night in Boumerdes province, 50 km (30 miles) east of the capital Algiers, residents said. GSPC is the only armed group operating in Boumerdes and the neighbouring province of Tizi Ouzou, Interior Minister Noureddine Zerhouni said last week....

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida's biggest ally in Africa is faltering in its efforts to transform the Sahara into an Afghanistan-style terror haven. But a critical mass of operatives has emerged in Italy, with ample resources and a broad shadow network primed to strike civilians across Europe. Three Algerian members of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an Algeria-based terror group cited on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terror organizations, were arrested last December by authorities in southern Italy and charged with planning attacks on civilians, according to Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu. More than $22 million...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version January 13, 2006, 8:11 a.m. The Butcher with the Terror Ties The evidence mounts. Drip, drip, drip. Drop by drop, isolated news stories and emerging documents are eroding the popular myth that Saddam Hussein had no connections to Islamofascist terrorists. These revelations undermine war critics’ efforts to whitewash Baghdad’s ancien regime — such as when Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid declared: “There was [sic] no terrorists in Iraq.” Likewise, Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) describes a “nonexistent relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.” Reid, Levin, and others who dismiss...

The mainstream U.S. media outlets have failed to report a major terrorist plot against the U.S. - because it would tend to support President Bush's use of NSA domestic surveillance, according to media watchdog groups. News of a planned attack masterminded by three Algerians operating out of Italy was widely reported outside the U.S., but went virtually unreported in the American media. Italian authorities recently announced that they had used wiretaps to uncover the conspiracy to conduct a series of major attacks inside the U.S. Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the planned attacks would have targeted stadiums, ships and...

Plans to 'top' 9/11 strikes 23/12/2005 20:13  - (SA)   Related Articles Pullout 'will lead to attacks' US at risk for more attacks US had 'bomber' in their hands Why is Osama so quiet?    Rome - Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday. The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11 2001 strikes by al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed about 2 700 people, Pisanu...

Saddam's Terror Training Camps What the documents captured from the former Iraqi regime reveal--and why they should all be made public. by Stephen F. Hayes 01/16/2006, Volume 011, Issue 17 THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials. The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in...

Asharq Al-Awsat- Three high-ranking militants in the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) surrendered to the Algerian security services. The militants “handed themselves in the last few days along with large amounts of weapons and money”, informed sources told Asharq al Awsat. Abu Bilal al Albani, responsible for the group’s external relations, Abu Omar Abdul Bir, who head of the media wing and a third man whose identity was not revealed but who hails from Qasr al Bukhari, south of the capital , surrendered on 26 December 2005 in al Mediya, south of Algiers. The men vowed to encourage...

Why U.S. officials worry about a group you've never heard of These days, there are few clear victories in the battle against terrorism. Instead, the effort is increasingly coming down to a series of arrests like the ones in Spain in early December. Police captured seven Algerians accused of stealing luxury goods from vacation homes along Spain's southern coast. Authorities say that the gang had infiltrated the high-end real-estate market to pick up tips on which homes to target. The real significance, however, is that the suspects were allegedly funneling the proceeds to other Algerian militants for attacks in Afghanistan and perhaps in...

MADRID — Spanish police arrested 16 people Monday who are suspected of recruiting Al Qaeda fighters to send to Iraq, officials said. The group's alleged leader, a 25-year-old Iraqi known as Abu Sufian, had access to Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, and probably sent his recruits on suicide missions, the Interior Ministry said. The 16, of several nationalities, sent volunteers to Iraq "to wage jihad as members of the Al Qaeda network," Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso told a news conference. He said the group had two fighters ready to send to Iraq at the time...

Spanish police arrested 15 people Monday on suspicion of recruiting and indoctrinating fighters for Iraq's insurgency, officials said. The cell was in close contact with al-Qaida members in Iraq and had two people ready to be sent there to wage "holy war," Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso told a news conference. The arrests stemmed from a probe that began in January and the cell sent "several" people to fight in Iraq, the minister said without giving a precise figure. More than 100 police officers staged raids that led to the arrests in the regions of Catalonia and Andalusia as well...

<p>November 19, 2001 -- An al Qaeda cell in Spain helped carry out the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, a Spanish judge said yesterday.</p> <p>High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon ordered eight alleged members of the cell to remain in jail while an investigation continues, charging they "were directly linked to the preparation and carrying out of the attacks perpetrated by ‘suicide pilots.' "</p>

At least seven people have been arrested in Spain on suspicion of helping to fund an Islamist terror group said to have links with al-Qaeda. None of the suspects - who include six men and a women - is Spanish. Their nationalities have not been revealed. Police made the arrest during raids in Malaga, Torremolinos and Marbella in the Costa del Sol. Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso there was no reason to believe they had plans for an imminent attack in Spain. He said the detainees were suspected of raising money and providing logistical support for the Salafist Group for...

Investigations into Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad bil-Maghrib (the Monotheism and Jihad group in Morocco) cells broken up by Moroccan security have revealed the inroads al-Qaeda has made into the region (see Terrorism Focus, Volume II, Issue 22). From the testimony of the arrested Belgian national Mohamed R'ha, al-Qaeda has emphasized the restructuring of its organization in Saudi Arabia and set up affiliate organizations in North Africa. As part of the broader restructuring plan, the Algerian Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC) is to rejoin bin Laden's organization and provide support bases for its expansion, in order to more...

PARIS: A group of Islamic militants detained on Monday in the Paris region have indirect contact with al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said. Four hundred police detained 25 people in a string of dawn raids. They were suspected of financing Islamist militancy by staging armed robberies. ''This group had links with a number of dangerous groups,'' Sarkozy told the National Assembly lower house of parliament yesterday during questions to the government. ''We also know that this group, 25 people, have indirect links to important al Qaeda leaders and al-Zarqawi,'' he said, without...

Brescia and Naples, 18 Nov. (AKI) - The three Algerians detained on Tuesday in the Italian cities of Brescia and Naples were planning a massive terror attack - "on a ship as big as the Titanic, packed with explosives" - that aimed to kill "at least 10,000 people", as well as an attack on "Italian citizens and interests" in Tunisia, according phone conversations between the three men, which Italian anti-terror police say they intercepted after al-Qaeda's deadly 7 July attacks on London and on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. In their tapped phone conversations, Yamine Bouhrama, Mohamed...

Naples, 17 Nov. (AKI) - Three Algerian men arrested in the Italian cities of Naples and Brescia on Tuesday night, suspected of being linked with an Algerian group connected to al-Qaeda, were due to appear before magistrates in Naples on Thursday. The men are suspected of being members of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). Investigators say they were not just in Italy to provide logistical support such as false documents, but were actually "potential operatives" who were "ready to attack". Naples named the three arrested suspects as Yamine Bouhrama, Khaled Serai and Mohamed Larbi. They were detained...

  Algerian Islamic rebels reject amnesty: statementSat Oct 1, 2005 10:25 AM ET By Paul de Bendern ALGIERS (Reuters) - An Internet statement attributed to Algeria's largest outlawed Islamic militant group, aligned with al Qaeda, said it opposed an amnesty in exchange for laying down its arms and would continue its "Jihad," or holy war. In a September 29 referendum, Algerians approved a government offer of partial amnesty for rebels still fighting for a purist Islamic state, in a bid to end more than a decade of civil war in which more than 150,000 people have died, mostly civilians....

A feared Algerian terrorist considered the mastermind of the 2003 Sahara Desert kidnapping of European tourists was sentenced to life in prison. However, the long-elusive Amari Saifi, a former Algerian special forces paratrooper known by his nom de guerre, Al Para, was absent from the courtroom Saturday to the surprise of lawyers and journalists. No explanation was given and his whereabouts remained a mystery. Saifi was convicted by Algiers' criminal court for "constitution of a terrorist group" and for "propagating terror among a population." Two of five other defendants, all present for the one-day trial, were sentenced to two years...

ALGIERS (Reuters) - One of North Africa's most wanted Islamic militant leaders, accused in the kidnapping of 32 European tourists last year, has been taken into custody in Algeria, authorities say. "Amar Saifi was intercepted in Libya near the Chadian-Libyan border. He is wanted in Algeria for numerous terrorist crimes which he has committed or commanded since 1992," the Interior Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Saifi -- identified by authorities as the second-in-command of the al Qaeda-aligned Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) -- was first captured by Chadian rebels in northern Chad in March after fleeing...

PARIS, July 4 — Libyan forces have discovered a terrorist camp with ties to Al Qaeda in the country's southern desert, a French newspaper reported Sunday. The report did not say whether the camp was active or abandoned when it was found 10 days ago. The newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, quoted European antiterrorism officials as saying that the camp, thought to be used by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, was near the border with Chad not far from the region where Chadian rebels are holding one of the terrorist group's most senior members, Amari Saifi, known as...