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| Africa: North |
| More on the GIA leader's capture |
| 2005-04-30 |
| Algerian authorities have arrested the leader of an Islamic rebel unit suspected of killing 14 civilians in an ambush this month near Algiers and seized a large arms cache, the Interior Ministry said on Friday. The arrest of Boulenouar Oukil of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) is the first major coup for the authorities since a month-long wave of violence against a government amnesty plan to end more than a decade of conflict. Militants killed 14 people and burned their bodies after stopping their vehicles at a bogus roadblock near Larbaa, some 20 km (13 miles) south of the capital on April 7. It was the deadliest attack on civilians in six months. The statement was the first official comment on the ambush, which rattled Algerians who had seen a steady return to normality after a conflict that killed up to 200,000 people. Algeria's principal rebel movement the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) and the now largely broken GIA are suspected of killing some 50 people since mid-March. Oukil is also accused of participating in the killing of 16 civilians in Medea in October, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The arrests and interrogations of Oukil and GIA member Mohamed Chama on April 17 led to the seizure of machineguns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, guns, rifles, semi-automatic weapons, ammunition, TNT, and logistics equipment and computers. Chama is accused of taking part in a massacre of 82 civilians in Larbaa in 1997, the ministry said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |