| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa North |
| Echafi'i, a Moroccan intelligence officer in El Qaeda |
| 2010-09-25 |
| [Ennahar] Sources close to former Moroccan Minister of Interior, Idris El Basri have uncovered information that the falcon of the royal palace would have revealed to some people who visited him at his Paris home in the end of 2005. The latter revealed secrets about the Algerian bands of Islamic bandidos, followed with interest by the royal palace since the early nineties. This new information held by Ennahar, of unpublished testimony by the dear departed Idris El Basri, on the Mauritanian Mustapha Echafi'i, 50, who served as adviser to the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, and who was an officer with the Moroccan military intelligence, known as "DGED" (Directorate General of Military Studies and documents) for many years, when he had in hand the kingdom's Ministry of Interior. Mustapha Echafi'i was known only by the security services and some African and European diplomats for his role as an intermediary between the heads of several African states, in favor of President Compaore of Burkina Faso, before the Moroccan authorities do think to use him in 2003 with the advent of muscle Salafi group for Preaching and Combat's kidnapping of 40 European tourists in the Algerian Sahara. Since that date, Mustapha Echafi'i was the only person to have participated in operations of release of Western hostages, kidnapped in Mali and Niger, and even in Mauritania, moving directly to the stronghold of the terrorist organization in northern Mali to negotiate and bring the ransom paid by European governments or intermediaries from Libya. According to sources close to former Interior Minister Idris El Basri, recruiting Shafi'i by Directorate General for Research and records was not to infiltrate the terrorist organization in the great desert, a hypothesis rejected by El Basri, especially as it would have helped to accentuate the crisis with Algeria since the terrorist attacks of 1994. If the organization AQIM had chosen Echafi'i to represent her during the various negotiations on the hostages and ransoms, information held by Ennahar confirm that Echafi'i, who has decamped his country (Mauritania) for years, has not hesitated to reveal the intentions of the royal palace against muscle of the terrorist organization. Repentants and a number of Islamic snuffies jugged in the Algerian Sahara in the past three years, spoke of the non-existence of Moroccan Islamic snuffies in this region since 2007. This absence was not spontaneous on the part of the terrorist organization but the work of an agreement between General Yacine El Mansouri, head of the DGED (military intelligence) and Mustapha Echafi'i Mauritanian officer, to prevent terrorist acts on Moroccan territory and ensure the recruitment of Sahrawi in the terrorist organization to strengthen the Moroccan thesis on peace and security in the Sahara. Echafi'i maintained since 2007 visits to the stronghold of the terrorist organization in Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal, to negotiate or to bring the ransom money. He had, for the first time, met the chiefs of the terrorist organization in June 2003, during the kidnapping of 40 European tourists in Algeria who have entered illegally from Tunisia. |
| Posted by:Fred |