4 MILITANTS KILLED IN ALGERIA

ALGIERS (AP) — Algerian authorities say four armed Islamic extremists have been killed in a shootout with soldiers southeast of the capital.

A security service statement Saturday says the fighting occurred overnight in Sour El Ghozlane, 120 kilometers (70 miles) from Algiers.

The four were in a car heading south when soldiers stopped them and the shooting began, the statement said.

Algeria's army has been fighting extremists for two decades, but tensions recently have been concentrated much farther south, in the desert close to the Libyan border.

Al-Qaida's North African arm, AQIM, is based in Algeria.

Algeria hostage-takers 'aided by Libyan Islamists'

Libyan Islamists provided logistical support to the militants who seized an Algeria gas plant before they were killed in a bloodbath which also left 37 foreigners dead, well-informed sources said.

"Logistical support was provided from Libya," a source close to extremist groups in Libya told AFP.
The source did not specify the exact nature of such aid but acknowledged that Libyan Islamists were responsible for establishing contacts between the captors and the media.
International media groups, including AFP, were able to get from Islamist circles based in eastern Libya telephone numbers of the kidnappers as they last Wednesday overran the In Amenas gas plant in the deep Algerian desert.
"There were no Libyans in the group which led the attack," the source said but recognised that there were "contacts" between the captors and Libyan jihadists.
The source also said that Libyan Islamists had no organisational link with the group, "Signatories in Blood", that led the four-day siege of the gas complex.
The group is led by one-eyed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, one of the founders of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM ). Belmokhtar left Al-Qaeda in October to create his own group.
Since the fall of the regime of Moamer Kadhafi in October 2011, Libyan Islamists have gained influence and inherited a large military arsenal from the conflict that ousted and killed the former Libyan strongman.
Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said on Monday the Islamist militants who carried out the attack on the gas plant had crossed from northern Mali.
He said they had planned the attack for nearly two months, much before France's intervention in northern Mali.
The militant group had said that their attack on the gas complex was in retaliation for French intervention in northern Mali.
Thirty-seven foreigners were killed in the attack on the remote gas plant, some of them executed with a bullet to the head, Sellal said.
He said that a total of 29 militants were also killed and three captured in the siege, which ended in a final showdown on Saturday after Algerian special forces stormed the sprawling gas complex.
Algeria has said its special forces managed to free 685 Algerian and 107 foreign hostages, most of them on Thursday, during their first rescue operation.

Mali Islamists say Algerian diplomat executed: agency

Islamic militants said Sunday they have executed an Algerian diplomat who was kidnapped during their takeover of northern Mali, according to a statement published by a Mauritanian news agency.

Taher Touati, the Algerian vice-consul “was executed this morning (Sunday) at dawn” read the statement from the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) published by online news agency ANI, known for carrying reliable information on extremist groups in the region.

Touti was among seven diplomats abducted in April after the Algerian consulate in Gao, northern Mali, was attacked by militant groups, some of which are accused of having links to al-Qaeda.

MUJAO released a video last week showing Touati pleading to the Algerian government to save his life. His family also called on his abductors to release him out of mercy due to his illness.

“The Algerian government must take complete responsibility for the consequences of its stubbornness and the misguided and irresponsible decisions of its president and its generals,” read the statement.

MUJAO had on August 24 given an ultimatum to Algeria, threatening to kill the hostage after Algiers rejected its demands for the release of Islamist prisoners in a hostage swap. Three of the hostages were freed in July.

MUJAO, one of several Al Qaeda-linked groups which have been in control of the north for five months.

Mali Islamists warn Algeria after hostage swap rejected

An al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group based in northern Mali warned Algeria of deadly reprisals on Friday after Algerian officials rejected a hostage swap, a statement released by the group said.

The so-called Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) is one of several emergent Islamist groups that seized control of northern Mali after a disastrous March coup in the capital Bamako.

Earlier this month, three armed Islamists were arrested by Algerian security forces in a special operation near the southern Algerian town of Ghardaia, according to official Algerian news service APS.

The detainees belong to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), to which MUJAO is allied, MUJAO said in a statement sent to AFP on Friday.

MUJAO said it has asked the Algerian government “to free our brothers” in exchange for MUJAO freeing one of the Algerian hostages.

“The Algerian government rejected the offer. Consequently, Algeria will be subject to all the consequences of this refusal,” the statement said.

MUJAO has claimed the April 5 kidnapping of seven Algerian diplomats from a consulate in Gao, in central Mali. Three of the hostages have been freed so far.

MUJAO said among those arrested in Algeria as Abd Arrahmane Abu Ishak, who heads AQIM’s legal commission.

“We are giving an ultimatum of less than five days, starting from now, to save the life of the (Algerian) hostage,” MUJAO official Abu Walid Sahraoui said in the statement.

“We intend to treat the Algerian authorities firmly. We will defend our mujahedeen brothers ... until the fall of the military regime in Algeria.”

Islamists swept across northern Mali after a March 22 coup carried out by troops protesting the government’s response to the Islamist presence in the vast desert north.

Several towns have since been placed under hardline sharia law, which has seen the carrying out of extreme punishments including the stoning to death of an unmarried couple.

Algerian Islamists fall to govt party in election

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) -- Islamists suffered a surprising defeat in Algeria's parliamentary elections, bucking a trend that saw them gain power across North Africa after Arab Spring uprisings.

The three party Islamist "Green Alliance" claimed Friday the results were rigged to keep them out of power in a country that has experienced decades of violence between radical Islamist groups and security forces.

The Green Alliance was widely expected to do well, but instead it was the pro-government National Liberation Front that has ruled the country for much of its history since independence from France that dominated the election.

The FLN, as it is known by its French initials, took 220 seats out of 462, while a sister party, also packed with government figures, took another 68 seats, giving the two a comfortable majority.

The Islamist alliance, which took just 48 seats, less than in the last election, said the results differed dramatically what their election observers had witnessed in polling stations.

"We are surprise by these results, which are illogical, unreasonable and unacceptable," said a visibly angry Abou Djara Soltani, the head of the largest party in the alliance, attributing the results to "those who would like to return to a single party rule."

Soltani told journalists that his alliance would discuss whether they would pull out of parliament, but said their most likely move was to attempt to ally with the smattering of other leftist and liberal parties in the opposition.

"These results will send the Algerian spring backwards," he added.

Algeria was largely spared the pro-democracy demonstrations that swept North Africa and the Middle East over the past year, cushioned by its huge wealth of oil and natural gas, and a population still traumatized by the violence that followed a military coup in 1991 when another Islamist party nearly won elections.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced reforms in 2011, however, and said the new parliament would be involved in rewriting the constitution.

In the runup to elections, the government portrayed the parliamentary contests as "Algeria's Spring" and invited in 500 international observers, promising these would be the freest polls in 20 years.

For the Islamists, however, the overwhelming victory for the government parties smacked of fraud, something that has characterized many past elections.

"Of course there was fraud," said Abderrazzak Mukri, the alliance's campaign manager. He said initial tabulations from voting stations Thursday night had put the Islamist party as a close second to the FLN.

Interior Minister Dahu Ould Kablia, who announced the results Friday, dismissed any possibilities of fraud and described the elections as free, transparent and fair.

"The was no fraud," he said at the press conference. "If anyone has proof, they have 10 days to present it."

In the 1991 elections that were canceled, the FLN took only a handful of seats compared to a crushing victory of the Islamist Salvation Front, which was later banned.

"The 1991 elections was a vote to punish the FLN, in 2012 it was a vote for safety," Kablia explaining the difference. He said Algerians saw the upheaval of the Arab Spring in neighboring Libya and Tunisia and opted for continuity.

Political analyst Mohand Berkouk of the Algiers-based Center for Research and Security concurred that the results were a clear vote for stability.

He said that the Islamists became overconfident, expecting a victory similar to elsewhere in the region. Soltani's Movement of Society for Peace was actually part of the governing coalition until it joined the opposition right before elections.

"They quit the government at the last minute to join the opposition and that was a fatal error," he said. "Their arrogant discourse, as though they were already in power, alarmed people, prompting them to vote for stability."

For many Algerians, however, the continuation a status quo of high unemployment - 20 percent for university graduates - is not attractive.

The last year has seen almost daily protests breaking out over the lack of jobs, affordable housing or decent health care.

"We believe that, by eliminating any illusion of change, the outcome of this election is set to increase discontent with the ruling elite, which will continue to pose significant risks to stability in the medium to long term," said a post-election analysis from the Eurasia Group.

"The defeat of the Islamist coalition is likely to exacerbate the already-widespread view that power in Algeria remains in the hands of a predatory elite detached from the needs of the vast majority of the population," it added.

The crushing win for the same party that has controlled the country for the last 50 years comes at a time when many Algerians have described themselves as uninterested in politics.

While the government announced a turnout of 42 percent of 21.6 million registered voters - an increase from 36 percent in 2007 -in the election, participation in the major cities was only around 30 percent.

Also at least 17 percent of the ballots cast were void - often because voters ripped them up before putting them into the voting envelope and dropping them into the ballot box.

A number of independent newspapers also expressed skepticism over the government's final turnout figure, citing a lack of voter interest observed across the country by their reporters in the field.

In contrast to the long lines and enthusiastic voters found in other Arab countries during elections brought on by the Arab Spring, most Algerians expressed little interest during the campaign, citing the assembly's lack of power and chronic election fraud.

Sociologist Nasser Djabi explained that unlike in Tunisia or Egypt, Algeria's Islamist parties do not have deep roots into society and their middle class activists can't mobilize people the way the Muslim Brotherhood can.

"If the population is mobilized or believes in someone or a party, a lot can happen," he said. "I think the middle class is scared of the Algerian population."

Qaeda group calls for Algeria election boycott, revolution

Al Qaeda’s North Africa wing has called on Algerians to revolt against the ruling elite and boycott a parliamentary election next month, describing the vote as “plastic surgery”, in an audio message posted on the Internet.

Energy-exporting Algeria is the only country in North Africa whose political system has been virtually untouched by Arab Spring uprisings that unseated autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

The government has made some moves to ease political restrictions, lifting a 19-year state of emergency, authorising the creation of new political parties for the first time in more than a decade, and inviting European Union monitors to oversee the May 10 vote.

But the head of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said these and other reforms were no more than window-dressing by a degenerate political clique desperate to stay in power, in the recording, titled “Boycott the Election Farce”.

“These elections will not bring the real change that is sought, rather it will be like plastic surgery, the goal of which is to give false legitimacy to this corrupted and corrupting gang,” said Abu Musaab Abdel-Wadud in the 21-minute message, uploaded to Islamist forums on Monday.

“Oh Muslims, your duty today is not to participate in this disgraceful, fake election; your duty is to reject those oppressors in disguise and wage jihad (holy war) and rise up against them,” added Wadud, who is also known as Abdelmalek Droukdel.

The authenticity of the recording could not independently be verified.
AQIM has only limited influence on Algerian society because most of the population is fed up with years of violence.

Algeria, an OPEC member, is a top gas producer and crucial ally for Western governments in the fight against AQIM around the southern edge of the Saharan desert.

Wadud said the government would use every means “including forgery” to contain the influence of Islamists, who are tipped to do well in the election, buoyed by Islamist gains in post-revolutionary north African states.
Long confined to the margins of the political scene or thrown in prison to ensure they stayed that way, Islamists have emerged as important actors in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt following the overthrow of their long-serving leaders.

In Algeria, armed Islamist groups fought the government and its supporters for most of the 1990s after the military cancelled an election Islamists were poised to win.

“They say this time they will accept the results, even if they produce an Islamic state,” said Wadud. “How can anyone sensible believe that those criminals will give up power and leave, just because the people want it and expressed that desire at the ballot box?”

Algerian Islamist parties form electoral alliance

Three of five Islamist parties running in Algeria’s elections in May announced Wednesday they were forming an alliance to jointly field candidates.

The “Green Algeria Alliance,” made up of the Movement for the Society of Peace (MSP), Ennahda, and the el-Islah (reform) movement, said in a statement they would “campaign together and present a joint platform.”

Two other Islamist parties, recently licensed by the government, the Front for Justice and Liberty (FJD) and the Movement for Change, have refused to join the alliance.

The performance of Islamist parties will be keenly watched in the May 10 vote.

Algeria gave up its one-party system in 1989, but the army intervened in 1991 when the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was about to win the elections. The decision led to years of unrest that left nearly 200,000 dead.

West African terrorist group claims responsibility for Tamanrasset car bomb attack

A new splinter group of AQIM called the Unity and Jihad Movement in West Africa (MUJAO) in Mali claims responsibility, in a message to AFP, of the car bomb attack which targets the national gendarmerie south of Algeria, leaving 23 injured, according to APS.

“We inform you that we are at the source of the blast this morning in Tamenrassat (south of Algeria)”, MUJAO, a new terrorist group said in a short written message.

At least 23 people, including 15 gendarmes, 5 elements of the Civil Protection and three citizens were injured Saturday in a suicide car bombing against the national gendarmerie in Tamenrassat (1.90 km south of Algiers), according to the APS.

This is the first terrorist attack in this region of Algeria.

MUJAO is a new splinter group of AQIM that advocates Jihad (holy war) in West Africa and has come to light in December 2011, claiming the kidnapping of three Europeans in Tindouf camps.

Algeria’s moderate Islamist party derides ‘political mediocrity,’ exits government

A moderate Islamist party pulled out of Algeria’s governing coalition on Sunday, saying that 2012 is the year of competition - not alliances.

The announcement by the Movement for a Peaceful Society, or MSP, to leave the so-called presidential alliance comes ahead of April legislative elections.

The MSP’s decision to enter the opposition should allow it to try to capitalize on the wave of Islamist victories in other Arab countries, although it is unclear how well the party can prosper after years inside the power structure.

The party had already reached out to Algeria’s Islamist ranks ahead of the elections, and differences with its partners, the powerful National Liberation Front and the National Democratic Rally, were well known.

The decision to leave the governing coalition, which it joined in 2004, was announced at the end of a gathering of the party’s Consultative Council focused on the upcoming elections and the party’s role in the alliance behind President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

MSP leader Abou Djara Soltani put the accent on disagreement over how to implement an array of reforms announced April 15 by Bouteflika to placate the restless Algerian population as uprisings now known as the Arab Spring have toppled leaders of other Arab nations.

He accused coalition partners of “emptying the political reforms of their substance in the name of partisan interests” rather than ensuring reforms worked in the interest of the people.

The year 2012, Soltani said, will be “the year of political competition ... and not that of the alliance,” synonymous with “political mediocrity which serves neither the country nor its citizens.”

Alliance partners, the powerful FLN and RCD, have rejected the MSP’s criticism that the planned reforms are tactical.

The MSP has four ministers in minor posts.

The MSP founder, Mahfoud Nahnah, who died in 2003, changed the party’s name from Hamas - not linked to the Palestinian movement - in 1999 to conform with a law banning references to Islam in party names.

That law grew out of Algeria’s effort to block the return of Islamic fundamentalism to the political scene after a now-banned Islamic party nearly won the nation's first multiparty elections in 1991 - aborted by the army to stop a likely victory. The move triggered an insurgency that left an estimated 200,000 Algerians dead.

Algerian Islamists hope for 'Arab Spring' revival

Algeria's Islamists, in the political wilderness since their last attempt to win power dissolved into civil war, are now trying again, galvanized by the success of their brethren elsewhere in North Africa in the wake of the "Arab Spring".

Most Islamists in Algeria have been excluded from political life since the conflict, but in the past few months they have shown renewed signs of activity, much of it conducted from exile to dodge the attentions of the Algerian state.

They have set up a satellite television station based in Europe, sent delegations to Arab countries that saw revolutions this year, and made tentative forays into anti-government protests.

Their chances of success are slim: they are divided into rival ideological camps, hemmed in by the powerful Algerian security apparatus, and, most importantly, discredited in the eyes of many people by a conflict in which they took part and which killed an estimated 200,000 people.

But they see an opportunity in the upheavals of the "Arab Spring," which have this year unseated entrenched secularist leaders. In neighboring Tunisia, a previously outlawed Islamist movement has come to power, while in Egypt Islamists have taken a strong early lead in multi-stage parliamentary elections.

"Tunisia was an example and launcher of this (Arab Spring) revolution," said Abdullah Anas, a London-based member of the leadership council of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which is banned in Algeria.

"It could be a very good example for Algeria."

LEGACY OF VIOLENCE

Any Islamist revival in Algeria, an OPEC member and supplier of about a fifth of Europe's imported gas, would have first to shed the burden of the country's bloody history.

Twenty years ago, FIS was poised to win a legislative election, called after street protests forced the authorities to loosen their grip on power. FIS said it would impose an Islamic state.

The military-backed government stepped in to annul the election. The Islamists took up arms and Algeria slipped into a conflict of horrific violence. Civilians had their throats slit in the street; in the mornings, people woke up to find their towns littered with bodies.

A rump of Islamists, now operating under the banner of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, is still fighting. They periodically ambush security forces in the countryside, kidnap Westerners and stage suicide bombings.

But the violence has subsided considerably. A huge security crackdown has rounded up thousands of insurgents. Others have laid down their arms and been granted an amnesty, in exchange for an undertaking to stay out of politics.

This legacy is the biggest obstacle to any comeback by Algeria's Islamists.

"Since then (the conflict), the Islamist was no longer seen as a hero who stands up against tyranny," said Soheib Bencheikh, a theologian who used to be the chief cleric at the mosque in Marseilles, France, where there is a large Algerian community.

"On the contrary, he became, in the eyes of public opinion, accountable for the pain and suffering of the people," Bencheikh told Reuters.

A fear of a return to violence helps explain why Algeria has this year remained relatively calm while neighboring countries have been convulsed by unrest.

TV STATION

But the Islamists still believe that Algeria is ripe for change, and are beginning to take practical steps.

Starting in November, a group of exiled Islamists with links to FIS set up a Europe-based television station, called Rachad TV. Carried by the Atlantic Bird 7 and Nilesat satellites, the station can be picked up in Algeria, where most homes have a dish.

It broadcasts political and social programmes where opposition leaders and activists -- most of them harshly critical of the government -- are invited to comment on Algeria.

At the top of the station's homepage on the Internet, there is a link to show viewers "how to free your country", and a second link to help them "organize and participate in unrest."

The exiles say they are also building contacts with other countries where "Arab Spring" revolts have propelled Islamists into a position of power.

Rachad says on its website that it sent a delegation to Libya in late September to meet officials in the new government, in which Islamists have a prominent role.

Abdullah Anas, the exiled Islamist in London, said there had also been contacts with Rachid Ghannouchi, the head of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party. Since an election in October his party leads Tunisia's coalition government.

Tunisia's experience had proved that it is possible to open up the political space in north Africa, said Anas.

"Everyone in Algeria must understand that Algeria has room for all ... no matter what opinions you have," he said, calling for a lifting of political curbs and the possibility of power-sharing between previously antagonistic groups.

SALAFISTS STIRRING

Inside Algeria, the most influential Islamist force are the Salafists, followers of an ultra-purist interpretation of Islam. Unlike the FIS, they are tolerated by the Algerian state because their creed forbids participation in politics.

When Algeria was shaken at the beginning of this year by protests sparked by a spike in food prices, the spiritual leader of the Algerian Salafists, Abdelmalek Ramdani, who lives in Saudi Arabia, issued a religious decree.

It said: "As long as the commander of the nation is a Muslim, you must obey and listen to him. Those who are against him are just seeking to replace him, and this is not licit."

Nevertheless, there are stirrings of political activity by some Salafist preachers.

Sheikh Abdelfateh Zeraoui, a former FIS member and now a well-known Salafist preacher in the Algerian capital, issued a declaration in October saying the government had to enact urgent reforms.

"Political reforms allowing us to have free political activity are key to the stability of the country. Without reforms the country may explode," the declaration stated.

The preacher has also tried to organise protest marches in the capital, but these have been blocked by the security forces. "We have been barred from politics," he told Reuters.

The fact that Algerian Islamists are divided dilutes their ability to stage a comeback, said Mohamed Mouloudi, an editor and specialist on Islam.

"They are no longer speaking with one voice," Mouloudi told Reuters.

"You have the Salafists, the Muslim brotherhood, and the Djaz'airists,(who give priority to Algerian religious traditions) among others," he said. "You have those who are for a political action, and those who consider political action as illicit."

SUCCESSION DEBATE

Even so, a debate is now under way in earnest within the Algerian ruling elite, for the first time since the conflict began 20 years ago, about giving Islamists a role in politics.

The focus for that debate -- which, like much of Algerian politics, is conducted behind closed doors -- is the question of who will succeed President Abdelaziz Bouteflika when his final term ends in 2014.

One camp within the elite is backing Abdelaziz Belkhadem, a former prime minister and secretary general of the ruling FLN party. He is a secularist but is trusted by the Islamists. Opposing him is a camp of hardline secularists who have backing from the powerful security forces.

Friction spilled out into the open when a group of Belkhadem opponents inside the FLN launched a campaign to have him removed from the party leadership.

"It will be wise to promote a man like Abdelaziz Belkhadem who has good ties with Islamists as well as with decision makers inside the regime," said Mohamed Lagab, a secularist