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Algeria Muslim body slams Christian evangelistsSun 1 Jun 2008, 7:22 GMTALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria hit back on Saturday at foreign accusations minority Christians are harassed, saying Protestant evangelicals were secretly trying to divide Algerians to colonise the mainly Muslim north African country.http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN130142.html   The Rising Threat of Revolutionary Islam in Algeria A radical Islamic victory in Algeria would pose significant long-term threats to US interests in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Muslim world ...http://www.heritage.org/Research/Africa/BG1060.cfm   2 bombings near Algerian capital wound 6 peopleThe Associated Press - Jun 4, 2008Algeria's Islamic militants have mounted increasing attacks over the past...

Petraeus: Al Qaida Trying to 'Come Back In' U.S. military officials said there will be no significant reduction in coalition troops in the Baghdad area as part of an effort to stop the Al Qaida offensive in northern Iraq. They said Al Qaida was trying to reenter Baghdad and reverse its losses in 2007. "Al Qaida is trying to come back in," U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said. "We can feel it and see it, and what we're trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground." Read More Militants Assert...

A poll by satellite TV Al Jazeera on the attacks in Algiers on December 11 has aroused bitter controversy in the Algerian media. "Are you in favour of Al Qaedàs attacks in Algeria?". This is the "scandalous question", daily Liberte writes, proposed by Qatar's channel Al Jazeera, "which makes of the terrorist apology one of the main editorial lines". The daily adds that more serious are the results: a total 54% of the TV audience has answered to be in favour of the double suicide bomb attack in Algiers against the seat of the UN and the Constitutional Court, "...

ALGIERS (Reuters) - The family of a suicide bomber who killed 17 U.N. staff in Algiers this week said he joined Islamist rebels after failing to get a taxi license and was motivated by "ignorance, not poverty", a newspaper reported. "We got nothing from al Qaeda, we are still very poor," Bechla Rabah's oldest son Younes told Echorouk. "Ignorance, not poverty, this is what pushed my father to blow himself up." Al Qaeda's North African wing claimed responsibility for twin car bombs on Tuesday that killed more than 30 people at the U.N. offices and a court building, saying it...

via translation - Strong explosion in the Supreme Court of Algiers ALGIERS-A powerful explosion, the nature of which is not yet known, occurred Tuesday at 8:45 GMT in Algiers near the Supreme Court of Algeria, Ben Aknoun, on the heights above the town, noted journalists of AFP . Many ambulances, sirens hurlantes, were directed at the scene of the explosion which was climbing a thick column of black smoke. A security cordon was immediately deployed and the road leading to the area, including housing the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Council, has been closed to traffic.

U.S. Seeks Closing of Visa Loophole for Britons -Full Story- Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the thwarted London bomb plot who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, showed the potential for disaffected young men to be lured as terrorists, a threat that British officials said they would have to contend with for a generation.But the 25-year-old Mr. Khyam, a Briton of Pakistani descent, also personifies a larger and more immediate concern: as a British citizen, he could have entered the United States without a visa, like many of an estimated 800,000 other Britons of Pakistani origin.American officials, citing...

Ahmadinejad Vows News Soon on Atomic Work -Full Story- Iran's president promised on Sunday Iranians would soon hear more news about the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, which the West believes is a covert effort to build atomic bombs despite Tehran's denials."The Iranian nation will soon hear fresh news about our country's nuclear transition," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying.He did not give details about any announcements or when the news would be released but Ahmadinejad is due to hold a news conference on Tuesday. Iran Warns Bush Not to Talk Unwisely Over Britons'...

WARDEN MESSAGE 13 April 2007 Embassy of the United States of America 4 Chemin Cheikh Bachir El-Ibrahimi 16030 Algiers, Algeria Tel: +213 (0) 21 69 12 55 ConsularAlgiers@state.gov According to unconfirmed information, there may be attacks in Algiers planned for April 14, 2007 in areas that may include the Algiers Central Post Office (Grande Poste), located in central Algiers on Rue Emir El Khettabi, and Algerian State Television Headquarters, ENTV, located on the Blvd des Martyrs, among others. The Embassy will be open for business as usual on Saturday, April 14, but is restricting the movement of personnel in...

Algiers - Suspected Algerian Islamist militants killed seven people and wounded eight on Sunday at a fake road block near the eastern town of Skikda, 700km east of Algiers, said a resident. The resident, who asked not to be identified, said the 10:00 attack was carried out by members of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), an Islamist guerrilla group on a United States list of terrorist organisations. The attackers set up a fake police road block and opened fire at an approaching truck as it slowed down. The truck was carrying mostly communal guards - security forces...

Last Testament of Victim Prior Blesses Murderers TIBHIRINE, Algeria, MARCH 28, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A friend of the prior of the Trappist monks of Tibhirine is trying to stir interest in the spiritual legacy of those men who were murdered a decade ago. On the night of March 26-27, 1996, some 20 gunmen invaded the Monastery of Notre Dame of Atlas in Tibhirine and kidnapped its seven Trappist monks, of French nationality. A month later, Djamel Zitouni, leader of the Armed Islamic Groups, claimed responsibility for the kidnappings and proposed an exchange of prisoners to France. The following month, a second...

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...

[World News]: MOSCOW, March 21 : Russia has accepted an invitation to attend the Arab summit meeting in Algiers Tuesday, Interfax news agency reported. Algeria, which will host the summit, invited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov to attend, the news agency said. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday Russia welcomed the opportunity to take part in the inter-Arab summit. "Russia welcomes the Algerian forum and sincerely wishes success to its delegates who will discuss current problems in the Middle East and North Africa, including the peace settlement between Arab countries and Israel, the situation in Iraq,...

Editors' preface: A noted historian of the Middle East has said the following about the legacy of scholars who devoted their careers to the study of the region: The giants of the recent past tend to be largely forgotten as soon as they are dead if not before, especially if what they have written isn't what is now considered fashionable or central … They are criticized when they are in error, but their achievements are forgotten.[1] While this is largely true in the English-speaking countries, it is not true in France, where a few French "giants" of Islamic and Arab...

Does torture work? The French military's use of torture in Algeria is often cited as a success story. But the real story is more complex. By Darius Rejali June 21, 2004 | Torture apologists point to one powerful example to counter all the arguments against torture: the Battle of Algiers. In 1956, the Algerian FLN (National Liberation Front) began a terrorist bombing campaign in Algiers, the capital of Algeria, killing many innocent civilians. In 1957, Gen. Jacques Massu and the French government began a counterinsurgency campaign in Algiers using torture. As English military theorist Brian Crozier put it, "By such...

ALGIERS (AFP) - Algerians began voting in an optimistic atmosphere in what many see as a genuine -- and unprecedented -- democratic election pitting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika against his former right-hand man, Ali Benflis, and four other rivals. "If it goes well we can say democracy has taken off in Algeria," said 65-year-old Omar Belhousse after casting his ballot in Algiers. Ticking off a list of firsts for the north African country, he said: "It's the first time we've had the freedom to express our will, it's the first time the opposition is really expressing itself. It's the first time...

February 2, 2004 issueCopyright © 2004 The American Conservative  French Lesson  The Battle of Algiers  By Steve SailerThe Pentagon’s special-operations chiefs screened the once-famous 1965 film “The Battle of Algiers” last August, inspiring its timely re-release in selected theatres this month. Produced by arch-terrorist Saadi Yacef (who played himself) and directed by the Italian Communist Gillo Pontecorvo, this favorite of the old New Left recounts with remarkably dispassionate (if selective) accuracy one of France’s many military victories on its road to losing the 1954-1962 Algerian war of independence. Ultimately, the 132-year-old settlement of one million “pied noir” Europeans was driven...

Tuesday June 24, 22:53 PM Italian police arrest six in crackdown on Islamist cell Italy's financial police launched a major swoop on an Islamist group said to have ties to the al-Qaeda network, raiding dozens of sites around Milan and arresting six for allegedly financing and abetting a terrorist organisation.In an operation unleashed at dawn, 170 officers searched around 40 sites including a mosque in the northern region of Lombardy, police said Tuesday.Five Tunisians and an imam, or religious leader, of Moroccan origin were arrested. A seventh Tunisian was also sought but is probably already imprisoned in Tunisia, police added.They...

Algeria has made an important breakthrough in its search for 31 missing European tourists with the discovery of one of their vehicles and confirmation from a senior army official that they are in the hands of more than a dozen Islamists. The tourists have been separated into two groups and are being held in canyons and gullies near the town of Illizi, which lies near the Libyan border some 900 miles south-east of Algiers, a senior security official told the French newspaper Le Monde yesterday. The 15 Germans, 10 Austrians, four Swiss, a Dutchman and a Swede who, while travelling...

Algiers - Interpol's new global communications system to track terrorists across the world will soon be operational in Algeria, the international police agency's chief said in an interview on Thursday. Interpol head Ronald Noble told daily El Moudjahid that the tracking system "will help Algeria combat (terrorism) more effectively". Noble, who ended a two-day visit to the conflict-ridden North African nation on Wednesday, said the device should be up and working by April. He said it would be entirely financed by Interpol. He said Algerian authorities had provided extensive information about the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, or GSPC,...

This is the tale of how a footloose, unfocused Algerian boy, son of a war hero, evolved into a terrorist. How he planned an attack against Americans on the eve of the new millennium. How he nearly got away with it. And how, since Sept. 11, he has been one of the U.S. government’s best resources in the war on terror. Algerian Ahmed Ressam was captured on Dec. 14, 1999, in Port Angeles, Wash., on his way to detonate a bomb at the Los Angeles International Airport.THE MAIN CHARACTERS Several people in this story are key to understanding the roots...