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.”
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