THE al-Qaeda linked group that has claimed responsibility for the raid at BP's desert gas complex in Algeria yesterday demanded the release of a veteran jihadist known as the Blind Sheikh and a Pakistani woman, in exchange for its American hostages.
4:59PM GMT 18 Jan 2013
A spokesman for the so-called "Witnesses in Blood" said that Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the group's leader, would make the demand to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and the Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, both serving life in the US for terror offences, in a video.
Rahman, an Egyptian found guilty of conspiracy to blow up the World Trade Centre in New York in 1993, is a legendary figure in radical Islamist circles.
Siddiqui is an American-educated neuroscientist jailed for assault with intent to murder her US interrogators after being named as an associate by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the September 11 mastermind.
The militants' spokesman warned Algerians to stay away from foreign companies, and vowed to carry out more attacks in retaliation for France's military intervention against Islamist groups in Mali.
"Taking into account the suffering of the Algerian people, we promise the regime that there will be more operations", Belmokhtar's representative said.
He told Algerians to "clear out from sites belonging to foreign firms [as] we will emerge in places where nobody is expecting us".
The statement was carried by Mauritania's ANI news agency, which has previously demonstrated close links to Belmokhtar's Masked Brigade. The Witnesses in Blood appears to be a subdivision of the brigade.
In parliament, David Cameron said it was believed that the Belmokhtar group was believed to be behind the attack.
The Masked Brigade spokesman said that the group had been preparing the attack for nearly two months in reprisal for international efforts to oust Islamist groups from northern Mali. The attack itslef was lead by a senior militant Abu Bara and not Belmokhtar himself.
"We knew that the [Algerian] government was going to ally itself with France in the war against Azawad," the spokesman said, using the name rebels in north Mali have given their desert enclave. An al Qaeda-linked alliance seized control of the vast area, twice the size of Texas, last year.
Born in Ghardaia, Algeria in 1972, Belmokhtar lost an eye fighting with the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Kabul government after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
He swears allegiance to al-Qaeda and named his son after Osama bin Laden, but is known in the region primarily as a gangster jihadist who puts holy war second to smuggling, kidnapping and extortion. So successful was his cigarette trafficking operation that locals came to call him "Mr Marlboro".
The United States has been monitoring him for years. The US embassy cables published by WikiLeaks said he possessed links to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), but lacked the group's ideological obsession.
His most spectacular act to date was the 2003 kidnapping of 32 European tourists, including French, Germans, Austrians and Swiss, in the Sahara.
The kidnappers are believed to have received a $6.5 million (£4.4 million) ransom, which elevated their profile and clout in the area.
Despite his links to AQIM, officials noted in US diplomatic cables that their contacts "all characterise Belmokhtar as more of a smuggler than an ideological warrior; more of an opportunist and bandit rather than a jihadi." "Even if he is not close to AQIM, an opportunist like Belmokhtar might decide there are times when it is in his immediate interest to help AQIM- but he probably weighs each instance carefully," the cables noted, with some prescience given this week's events.
Belmokhtar is believed to have married at least one Malian Tuareg woman, which brought him loyalty from Tuareg clans that reside near the Mali-Algeria border and secured his smuggling business.
A cable written in 2007 claimed that Mokhtar Belmokhtar was "seeking a deal with the government to allow him to retire and live peacefully in Mali".
At the time, it was believed that he did not support the AQIM leadership, but was not able to make a "clean break" from the organisation. The interjection of French military force appears to have strengthened those bonds.
For all his reputation for pure crime, by becoming the assumed mastermind behind the seizure of foreign hostages, he has burnished his jihadi credentials by showing that al-Qaeda's ideology remains a potent threat to Western interests despite the death of its leader in Pakistan in 2011.
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