A surrender by the majority of Algeria's Islamic militants will take up to three months while terms are arranged, an ex-rebel leader and negotiator said on Monday. Such a surrender would mark the end of North Africa's largest militant organisation even if its diehard leaders did not particate. It would also end a 12-year uprising that has cost the lives of up to 150,000 people in Algeria. More than 300 members of the al Qaeda-aligned Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) and dozens of rebels of smaller rival Armed Islamic Group (GIA) want amnesty in exchange for laying down their arms, security sources told Reuters. "The process of surrendering is imminent but it will take two to three months. They are just waiting for the legal framework to do so," former rebel leader Madani Mezrag told Reuters by telephone. He said he was one of the negotiators. "Those who are in the mountains are convinced the time has come to come down," said Mezrag, who negotiated in the late 1990s the surrender of his AIS, the armed wing of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party.
Authorities have remained silent on the issue and the Interior Ministry was not available for comment. The sticking point to a surrender was the absence of a law that could grant rebels amnesty as the "civil concord" which gave thousands of militants freedom in 1999-2001 had expired, political analysts said. "An executive order or an amendment to a law would take weeks if not months to push through," said Mounir Boudjema, a local security expert and editor. It was also unclear whether a surrender would automatically mean amnesty or whether some would be given jail sentences. Mezrag said 80 percent of all rebels in Algeria wanted to give up their armed struggle. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is unlikely to want to rush any deal because of the resentment held against rebels suspected of assassinations over the past decade. "Giving an amnesty to the terrorists could go down badly with the public. He'll have to tread carefully even if he won a landslide election (on April 8)," Boudjema said. |