ALGIERS — Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay
bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the
deadly attack on the United States Mission in Libya in September, a
senior Algerian official said Tuesday.
The Egyptians involved in both attacks were killed by Algerian forces during the four-day ordeal that
ended in the deaths of at least 38 hostages and 29 kidnappers, the
official said. But three of the militants were captured alive, and one
of them described the Egyptians’ role in both assaults under
interrogation by the Algerian security services, the official said.
If confirmed, the link between two of the most
brazen assaults in recent memory would reinforce the transborder
character of the jihadist groups now striking across the Sahara.
American officials have long warned that the region’s volatile mix of
porous borders, turbulent states, weapons and ranks of fighters with
similar ideologies creates a dangerous landscape in which extremists are
trying to collaborate across vast distances.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who
is scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday about the Libyan
attack that killed the American ambassador and three staff members,
raised the specter of regional cooperation among extremists soon after
the mission in Benghazi was overrun.
In particular, she said the Islamist militant
takeover of northern Mali had created a “safe haven” for terrorists to
“extend their reach” and work with other extremists in North Africa, “as
we tragically saw in Benghazi,” though she offered no clear evidence of
such ties.
Now the Algerians say the plot to seize the
gas complex in the desert was hatched in northern Mali as well. Indeed,
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the veteran militant who has claimed overall
responsibility for the siege, is believed to be based there.
But the Algerian official did not say why the
captured kidnapper’s assertion — that some fighters had taken part in
both the Benghazi and Algerian attacks — should be considered
trustworthy. Nor did he say whether it was obtained under duress.
Instead, he focused on the chaos unleashed by
the recent uprisings throughout the region, leaving large ungoverned
areas where extremists can flourish.
“This is the result of the Arab Spring,” said
the official said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because
investigations into the hostage crisis were still under way. “I hope the
Americans are conscious of this.”
American counterterrorism and intelligence
officials have said that some members of Ansar al-Shariah, the group
that carried out the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, had
connections to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,
one of the militant groups now holding northern Mali. But American
officials have also said that the Qaeda affiliate played no role in
directing or instigating that Benghazi attack.
Similarly, Egyptian security officials said
they believed that a longtime Islamist militant from Egypt was involved
in the gas field attack, but the officials did not know of any
connection to the Benghazi attack as well.
Algeria was
firmly opposed to the Western intervention to help topple Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi in Libya in 2011, and this nation’s conservative leadership
viewed the Arab Spring with deep suspicion, making no secret of its
desire to avoid any such occurrences.
Small-scale demonstrations here were quickly
stifled, and ever since Algerian officials have not hesitated to point
at what they see as the connection between popular demands for greater
democracy that have swept the Arab world and the rise of Islamist
militancy in the region.
Algerian officials says the militants who
seized the gas field traveled through Niger and Libya, whose border is
only some 30 miles from the plant at In Amenas. Mohamed-Lamine Bouchneb,
the militant leading the attack at the site, had purchased arms for the
assault in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, the senior official said.
The kidnappers had also gathered, undisturbed,
at the southern Libyan town of Ghat, just across the border from
Algeria, he said, depicting Libya as anarchic, without an effective
military force and an ideal staging ground for attacks like the one
launched a week ago.
Having already experienced a large-scale
Islamist insurgency in the 1990s, in which perhaps as many as 100,000
were killed, Algeria had no intention of experiencing another, the
official suggested. He defended the tough Algerian military assault
during the standoff and dismissed criticism by foreign leaders that they
were not informed of it in advance.
“We left it all up to the military chiefs,” he said. “Myself, I was only informed a half-hour afterwards.”
His assertion squares with the widely held
view of Algerian analysts that the military, and in particular a cadre
of elderly generals, holds a wide degree of autonomy in the country and
often acts independently of civilian leadership.
The official said that Algeria could expect
more terrorist attacks, despite having delivered sharp blows to
militants over a period covering nearly 15 years.
“We’re waiting for more,” he said. “We are not out of the woods yet.”
SHABAB LIBYA.ORG
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