Free Republic

Nine soldiers were killed by Islamic extremists at Oued Djemaâ in the Aïn Defla region, 140 kilometres (85 miles) east of the capital Algiers, newspaper reports said Thursday. The soldiers were operating in the mountainous sector on Wednesday when their progress was halted by homemade bombs and they came under fire from suspected members of the hardline Armed Islamic Group (GIA). Their attackers stole their weapons before fleeing into a neighbouring forest, the reports said. The latest victims take the number of people killed this month in violence involving Islamic militants to at least 12, according to estimates based on...

Algeria Islamists kill 14 members of family Security services say attack occurred in Chlef region known for Armed Islamic Group's activities. ALGIERS - Fourteen members of a single family were killed in Algeria overnight by armed Islamist extremists west of the capital of Algiers, security services said Tuesday. Two fathers, their wives and children aged 18 months to 17 years were killed in the attack in the Chlef region, 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the capital. It followed an attack Sunday during which eight people were killed by Islamist extremists in the same region, where militants from the Armed...

Algiers - Islamist extremists killed eight people in an attack in western Algeria on Sunday, security services said. Armed Islamic Group (GIA) militants are active at Boukaat El Maqam near Ain Merrane in the Chlef region, 200 kilometres west of the capital Algiers, where the attack took place at 04:00. No other details of the attack were immediately available. The GIA is the most brutal extremist group in the Algerian civil war. Along with the rival Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), it has rejected a partial amnesty offered in 1999 by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika as part of a...

April 29, 2003, 8:45 a.m. Roam Free The European legal obstacles to the war on terror. By Lorenzo Vidino In the months since September 11, U.S. authorities have received significant support in Europe in their effort to track down al Qaeda operatives. Nevertheless, the severe evidentiary requirements of many European legal systems are preventing them, in some cases, from bringing terrorists to justice. One example of this troubling situation is currently taking place in Italy. Last January, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported that Italian intelligence (DIGOS) has been monitoring the activities of a suspected al Qaeda cell in the...

Germany is poised to send its crack anti-terrorist GSG9 police unit to Algeria to help free 31 European tourists thought to have been kidnapped after they vanished in the Sahara between February and April this year.European governments are frustrated by the lack of progress made by Algeria in finding the tourists - 15 Germans, 10 Austrians, four Swiss, a Dutchman and a Swede - who had been travelling in several groups when they disappeared.   There has been no official word on their whereabouts or of any ransom demand from their kidnappers - believed to be members of the Salafist...

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...

Europe is trapped by complacency and an all too human desire for oblivious contentment, says a leading French philosopher. This helps ensure the success of the nihilistic terror and extremist ideology exemplified by al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. Nobody wants war – but genocide is worse than war. Liss Gehlen/Jens Heisterkamp: Why do you return to the work of Dostoevsky to explain the terrorism of the 20th and 21st centuries? André Glucksmann: In Dostoïevski à Manhattan I pose a philosophical question: what is the ‘idea’, the characteristic form of modern terrorism? And my answer is: nihilism. Socrates asked: what do a...

OTTAWA -- A lovestruck Sophie Harkat had no idea what the future had in store for her when she met her husband at the gas station where he worked more than three years ago. Four days after Mohamed Harkat was arrested outside their apartment building, the 28-year-old woman is stunned by the allegations he has links to terrorism. "I've never had any reasons to suspect him of any wrongdoing," she said yesterday, speaking publicly for the first time since her husband's arrest earlier this week. "I'm shocked and appalled by this news. I sincerely love my husband and I trust...

ROME - During a raid on a small Roman apartment frequented by alleged Arabic terrorists arrested at dawn last Friday, police found videos of decapitations and suicide bombings, plus political propaganda for a holy war. But what set off alarm bells was an Arizona address on a folder of Arabic documents. "We are working with our American colleagues to see if there is a link between this Phoenix address and pilots of the September suicide attack in New York," says Col. Gianfranco Cavallo, a leading police investigator, in an interview. He says Italian and FBI detectives are also exploring ...

An Algerian who infiltrated a London mosque for the British intelligence service has shed new light on suspected links between the 1999 activities at an Oregon ranch and the al-Qaida terror network. In a telephone interview from London yesterday, Reda Hassaine said two Egyptian-born men known to have visited the Bly, Ore., ranch and are suspected of inspecting it as a possible terror-training camp are direct subordinates of the London-based Muslim radical Abu Hamza. The two men came to Hamza's mosque in 1998 directly from terror-training camps in Afghanistan, he said.Hamza, a London cleric who lost both hands and an...

ALGIERS, Algeria -- A wave of explosions marred Algeria's independence day celebrations on Friday, with the most deadly blast ripping through a crowded open-air market outside the capital, killing at least 35 people and injuring dozens. The market blast in the town of Larba, nearly 15 miles southeast of the capital, was the worst attack in more than two years in this North African nation, which is battling a 10-year Muslim insurgency. No one immediately claimed responsibility. A second bomb at a cemetery honoring war veterans injured one person, while another injured four soldiers, reports said. Witnesses reported a fourth...

Armed Islamic extremists killed 34 civilians in a 24-hour period in Algeria, security services said. Three were killed and a fourth kidnapped in the northwest of the country on Thursday, just a day after 31 people were massacred in the same region, which is witnessing a surge of violence ahead of parliamentary elections on May 30. Algerian security services said two men and a woman were killed as they returned from their fields near Chlef, 200 kilometres (125 miles) west of Algiers, and a young woman was kidnapped. The security forces were conducting a widespread search operation in the region,...