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FRENCH intelligence has produced a dossier alleging that al-Qaeda plans an attack on the country during forthcoming presidential elections. The Arabic-language al-Hayat daily newspaper has reported there were "several indications of a plot to copy the Spanish scenario in France", a reference to the explosions that rocked Madrid in March 2004. The London-based daily quoted mainly "messages posted on internet sites close to al-Qaeda carrying threats against France, accompanied by pictures from the campaigns for the presidential elections", which are slated for April and May. The newspaper said the eight-page intelligence report took three months to prepare and included contributions...

A Moroccan court on Friday jailed eight Islamists for up to 10 years for plotting attacks and belonging to the al Qaeda network, court officials and lawyers said. The court in Sale, a twin city to Rabat, convicted Ben Moujane Mohamed for "belonging to al Qaeda and preparing terrorist attacks". Mohamed, who was captured in 2002 by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and jailed at Guantanamo Bay prison, was handed over to Morocco early last year. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Friday, Sale court officials and lawyers said. The court, in a separate case, condemned six...

The leader of an Algerian terrorist group hinted in a new video posted on the Internet that his group would follow al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's instructions if asked to fight outside of Algeria. "Place us wherever you want. You will find us to be obedient," says Abu Musaab Abdul Wadud in the 22-minute video entitled "We Are Coming." The Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) joined al Qaeda in 2006 and pledged allegiance to bin Laden, as announced in a video by al Zawahri and later confirmed by the group itself. "Our brothers will be a...

Al-Qaida affiliate claims Algeria attack ALGIERS, Algeria, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- The recent attack on foreigners in Algeria signaled renewed activities of Muslim extremist groups believed to be linked to al-Qaida network. The notorious Salafi Group for Daawa (call) and Fighting, one of Algeria's armed groups resisting a peace pact for national reconciliation, Tuesday claimed responsibility for an attack two days ago on a bus carrying foreign employees of an American company in which two were killed and eight injured. The group said in a statement signed by its "information committee" and carried on its internet Web site that a...

There is an alarming development in Northern Africa in the growth of radical Islamic groups - as indicated by a new and official alliance between al-Qaida and the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), warns Mathieu Guidère. __________________________________________ Al-Qaida’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, used the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks on the United States to announce on video that the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) had officially joined al-Qaida. He had a message for France (despite its government’s refusal to follow the United States into Iraq as part of the war on terror:...

Asharq Al-Awsat, Rabat - Investigations carried out by the Moroccan security services after the arrest of a terrorist cell that was made up of 17 members have uncovered the cell's terrorist plans. These plans included restructuring the Al-Qaeda organization in Saudi Arabia following the Saudi security forces' success in finding and arresting a number of its activists. The cell also planned to have the extremist Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) rejoin Osama Bin Ladin's organization and set up an Al-Qaeda branch in the Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) as a base for attacks to be launched on...

ALGIERS, (Reuters) - Algerian rebels shot dead eight soldiers in an ambush in the heaviest reported government losses for seven months in the north African country's lingering political violence, newspapers reported on Saturday. The papers Liberte, El Watan and El Khabar said the eight, including an officer, were ambushed in wooded mountains while on a patrol in the Ain Defla region 120 km (75 miles) southwest of Algiers on Thursday. It was the largest reported single loss of state personnel to politically-motivated fighting since Islamist guerrillas killed 13 customs agents in the desert south in April. Liberte and Khabar said...

ALGIERS, (Reuters) - Two people were killed and 17 wounded when Algerian Islamist rebels set off truck bombs outside two police stations east of Algiers in their most elaborate attack in years, witnesses said on Monday. The simultaneous overnight blasts in Reghaia town 30 km (20 miles) east of the capital and the eastern Algiers suburb of Dergana were the first against police stations in Africa's second largest country for more than five years. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but experts, residents and security sources blamed the main rebel group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC),...

RABAT, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Moroccan authorities are holding 14 people suspected of belonging to a regional radical Islamist group linked to al-Qaeda, government officials said on Friday. The 14 suspects had planned to carry out an unspecified "terrorist plot" on Morocco, with the help of al Qeada-linked foreign fighters who would travel from the Sahel-Sahara region, they said. Morocco, a staunch U.S. ally in the global fight on terror, has been on alert since 2003 when suicide bombings killed 45 people in Casablanca, the country's commercial capital. It has arrested more than 3,000 people since then and broken up...

October 23, 2006: Islamic radicals are still trying to figure out what they did wrong in Algeria. There, in 1992, the generals and old revolutionaries (who had led the fight against French colonialism three decades earlier), refused to respect a democratic vote, that gave Islamic political parties control of the government. Islamic radicals then led a decade long terror campaign that left over 100,000 people dead (mostly civilians, slaughtered by terrorists for not supporting the cause). Over 20,000 Islamic radicals died as well. The Islamic radicals lost. There are still about a thousand of them in Algeria, but they spend...

Swiss police have arrested a man whom they suspect of belonging to an Algerian Islamic fundamentalist cell that financed terrorist attacks in Algeria. The Swiss Justice Office confirmed on Monday that a man detained last week on charges of counterfeiting documents was now ready to be extradited to Italy. Italian authorities, working in cooperation with the Swiss, said the Milan: based cell had raised at least ?1.62 million (SFr2.57 million). The Italians issued international arrest warrants for three suspects and charged two others already in prison for separate crimes. An Italian police statement on Monday said the cell "financed and...

Italian police say they have uncovered an Islamist group believed to be providing support for suspected militants in Algeria. A police spokesman said six people had been arrested or were being served with arrest warrants. Most of the arrests were executed around Milan, in northern Italy. One suspect was found in Switzerland. Police say they believe the group was giving financial and logistical support to Islamic terrorist groups. Italian police spokesman Lt Col Domenico Grimaldi told a news conference that the group was part of a wider network operating across much of Europe, and was connected to al Qaeda. The...

Milan, 2 Oct. (AKI) - Italian police on Monday issued six arrest warrants - three of which were served - and announced they had dismantled a terrorist cell suspected of having financed two terror attacks near Algiers last year in which 20 people died. The group, made up mainly of Algerians, was allegedly close to the Salafite Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which has recently sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda, and to the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). One of the suspected militants is Mejri Afif, a Tunisian, who was arrested in Switzerland while Ahmed Nacer and El Heit Ali were...

The French services believe that several cells of activists have formed in France. "In 2002, the networks of the GSPC [Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat] in France and Europe were moribund and the group was in great difficulty in Algeria," a judge comments. "Three years later, it is still weak in its own country but is regaining strength in Europe." If a precise estimate is difficult to make, the Algerian terrorists could still count on the support of several dozen individuals in France. In its latest note, the Antiterrorist Coordination Unit (Uclat) speaks of "some 40 cells created owing...

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader has claimed that a radical Algerian Islamist group had joined al-Qaeda and is being urged to punish France, it has emerged. Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared a video on a website on the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks. In the tape, he issued a warning of new attacks targeting Israel and the Gulf. Although France's government opposed the US-led war in Iraq, French officials believe the country is still a target for Islamist militants. In the video, Zawahiri says: "Osama Bin Laden has told me to announce to Muslims that the GSPC [the Salafist Group for Preaching...

Norway's largest synagogue received an ominous warning last November that it would be one of two targets of terrorist attacks in Oslo. The threats came in conjunction with the arrests in Italy of several members of an alleged terror group. "I can confirm that we received information that an attack was planned against the synagogue," Anne Sender of The Mosaic Religious Community in Norway (Det Mosaiske Trossamfund, DMT) told newspaper VG on Monday. Sender said the threats were so credible and alarming that they were taken "very seriously," and the synagogue's security went on high alert. She wouldn't say who...

ROME - Four Algerians were arrested Friday on terrorism charges in northern Italy, a police official said. ADVERTISEMENT The suspects were affiliated with the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an Algerian group said to have links to al-Qaida, said an official with the Carabinieri paramilitary police in the northern city of Padua. He asked that his name not be used because he was not allowed to talk to the media. The four were allegedly in charge of financing and recruiting new militants as well as acquiring false documents, including identity documents and work permits for immigrants, the official said....

Algiers, 26 June (AKI) - Algerian police killed 19 Islamic militants who rejected a government amnesty aimed at ending years of conflict following a civil war in the 1990s, reports said on Monday. Police reportedly raided on Sunday bases of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which has sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda, in the eastern province of Annaba. The operation followed an upsurge in attacks by Islamic fundamentalists this month which killed 31 people. Unlike some other Islamic militant groups, the GSPC has refused to give up the armed struggle in exchange for an amnesty offered by president...

In fact Dahou Meskine along with sixteen other people were arrested on Monday and Tuesday for allegedly financing Islamic terrorism. The most probable organization that benefited from this money is the Algerian terrorist group GSPC. In fact, investigators found out that hundreds of thousands of Euros were funneled through some organizations and corporations owned by Meskine and his son to dubious NGOs. Nonetheles one of the persons in charge of the investigation acknowledged today to the daily Liberation that it will be tough to prove that this was done solely to finance terrorism. But what's even more troubling is the...