Armed Islamic Group

GIA

2/3/2007

Headquartered in Algeria, the Armed Islamic Group was composed of Muslim fundamentalists who sought to overthrow the Marxist Muslim regime in Algeria and replace it with a Salafist Islamic state under Sharia Law. They were founded in early 1992, immediately after the Algerian government banned their parent organization - the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front.

The Groupes Islamiques Armes, known by the acronym GIA (in Arabic, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyah al-Musallah) was born when the Algerian OPEC regime declared the election landslide of the Islamic Salvation Front null and void following their overwhelming victory in December 1991. The ISF was Algeria's largest political and religious party, and resolutely Salafist. The Algerian government, as dictatorial regimes are wont to do, outlawed the popular Islamic Salvation Front, and threw thousands of their leaders and activists in jail. Since the ISF was banned, the GIA was conceived as nothing more than a new name for the old group. Their membership and leadership was populated exclusively by the parent's best (read fundamentalist and jihadist) Muslims.

The Armed Islamic Group, as their name implies, engaged in frequent jihadist attacks against civilians, especially journalists and teachers in secular schools. They didn't care much for police or government workers either. This fundamentalist Islamic gang was so ruthless, they would often wipe out entire villages during one of their raids - indiscriminately killing women and children, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Like their prophet, they were especially good at rape, plunder, and the slave trade. Islam is as Islam does.

From 1993 to 1998, the Armed Islamic Group, which was nothing more than a new name for Algeria's majority political and religious party, was directly involved in the slaughter of more than 80,000 Algerian civilians. Most were killed in surprise raids perpetrated by armed militias against defenseless and impoverished farming communities.

These Muslim militants deployed the standard fare of Islamic tactics, including assassination, kidnap for ransom, suicide bombers, car bombs, and IEDs. They were textbook terrorists whose favorite tactic was to abduct a person from a town, torture them, and then behead them by slitting their throats while reading passages from the Quran.

The long arm of Islamic terror reached out into other nations infected by this disease. The Islamic Salvation Front's Armed Islamic Group killed hundreds of Algerian expatriates living in exile in Europe. But they were equal opportunity haters and became proficient at killing foreigners in addition to Algerians. In 1993, Groupes Islamiques Armes announced a campaign against non-Muslim infidels living in Algeria. The two French businessmen decapitated in September of 1993 were their initial victims.

In an event that foreshadowed September 11th, the Islamic Salvation Front's Armed Islamic Group hijacked an Air France jet before it departed from Algiers to Paris on Christmas Eve in 1994. The hijackers' downfall was their braggadocios attitude. After they released some women, children, and elderly passengers before takeoff, the freed hostages told French authorities stationed in the former colony that the jihadists wanted to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower and have it explode over Paris. All four Armed Islamic Group militants were killed when French security forces stormed the plane.

In 1995, the GIA took credit for a series of subway bombings in France. The Armed Islamic Group killed seven passengers and wounded another 80 French citizens.

In December 1999, Ahmed Ressam, a GIA member, was arrested at the U.S.-Canadian border with a carload of explosives. Ressam, an Algerian Muslim who was living in Canada, had schemed to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve, 2000. Ressam, who was convicted on terrorist charges, led investigators to Islamic co-conspirators in Canada and the United States.

As a result of the carnage, in September 1997 the Algerian military junta agreed to implement the Islamic Salvation Front's plan to expand Sharia law into all areas of public and private life throughout the OPEC nation. Their focus was women's rights (or lack thereof). Like Saudi Arabia women were denied access to cars, travel, education, work, and politics. And they were required to comply with Islam's hideously discriminatory dress code.

However, unable to restrain themselves, the GIA continued to conduct terrorist operations through August of 2001. But just because that was the last jihadist raid perpetrated by the Islamic Salvation Front's Armed Islamic Group, doesn't mean that the terrorists set down their swords, guns, and bombs and became civil. No. They simply changed their name and started expressing the true nature of their religion under the Salafist Group for Call and Combat brand.

In September 2005, the Algeria regime capitulated once again to the Islamic Salvation Front and their Armed Islamic Group and Salafist Group for Call and Combat. They adopted the "Peace and Reconciliation Charter" which pardoned all Islamic militants who were not responsible for civilian massacres, rapes, or bombings of public places. The ISF's imprisoned leaders, were all released because in jail, they had only inspired but not actually done these crimes.

Abassi Madani was the founder and leader of the Islamic Salvation Front, taking the organization from a Qur'an study group to the majority religious and political party in Algeria. When his fundamentalist Islamic organization garnered the most votes in a 1991 national election, Madani became a target of the Algerian regime. He was arrested on June 30th 1991, and served the next several years in a military prison. He was released on parole in July 1997 once the military junta had capitulated to his primary demands. He was rearrested however in September 1997. Madani was confined to an apartment in Belcourt, Algeria in response to public comments and a letter he sent to the United Nations requesting a solution to the ongoing civil war in Algeria - one he himself had started. Madani remained incarcerated until July 2003, when he was sent into exile. As a condition of his release, the Islamic cleric and terrorist was banned from all political activity.

Abassi Madani still heads the Islamic Salvation Front, though he now lives in Doha, Qatar. He routinely meets with Saudi officials as he shares their fundamentalist view of Islam. And as one might expect, the Quran scholar is critical of Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Madani's partner in establishing the ISF was Ahmed Zaoui, a professor of Islamic theology at the University of Algiers. Zaoui fled to Belgium in 1993. Under pressure from Algeria, a Belgian court charged him with traveling with forged documents and membership in a "criminal organization." While under house arrest in Belgium, Zaoui fled to Switzerland and soon thereafter was deported to Burkina Faso. After two years, Zaoui moved to Malaysia. Upon the discovery of the Malaysian government's intent to extradite him back to Algeria, where he would be executed, Zaoui fled to New Zealand. In 2003, Zaoui's application for refugee status was approved, though he would not be released from prison on bail until 2004.

Ali Belhadj was another of Abassi Madani's partners in crime. He was a Algerian schoolteacher before becoming a leader in the Islamic Salvation Front. Belhadj was the second in command of the Islamic Salvation Front and was known as one of the more violent members of the group. In March 1991, Belhadj was instrumental in organizing a general strike in protest of an electoral law which redistricted seats to favor Algeria's governing regime. For his role in the protests, Belhadj was sentenced to 12 years in jail.

Released in 2003, Belhadj was banned by the Algerian government from taking part in politics. In 2005, Belhadj was re-arrested after allegedly "praising terrorism" in an interview on al-Jazeera. In March 2006, Belhadj was released from prison under a national reconciliation act with Islamic terrorists.

Ahmed Abu Abdullah joined the Armed Islamic Group shortly after its birth in early 1992. He had been a member of the Islamic Salvation Front's Jihad Justice Council. Ahmed Abu Abdullah was implicated in a number of assassinations of public figures and foreign businessmen in Algeria. In one of his more infamous incidents, Ahmed Abu Abdullah ordered his jihadists to murder five French diplomats living in the French Embassy's housing complex in August 1994.

Also known by the alias Sherif Ghousmi, Ahmed Abu Abdullah became the head of the GIA following the death of Mourad Sid Ahmed. A press release from the Armed Islamic Group in August 1994 claimed that the GIA had created an Islamic government - and that Ahmed Abu Abdullah was the chief executive of Algeria. But not for long, Ahmed Abu Abdullah was killed in Algiers on September 26th 1994.

Djamel Zitouni became head of the GIA after Ahmed Abu Abdullah was killed. Under his leadership, the GIA hijacked an Air France flight with the intent of turning it into a suicide bomber over Paris. Later in 1995, Djamel Zitouni's Armed Islamic Group claimed credit for a series of subway bombings in France, killing seven people and injuring 80 more. Then in April 1996, the GIA executed seven kidnapped French Catholic priests.

Zitouni's GIA continued to terrorize Algerians, increasing their raids on civilians living in small towns. They wanted to coerce villagers to move to cities to put additional pressure on the military junta.

Zitouni was killed in July 1996 by a rival faction within the Islamic Salvation Front's consortium of jihadist groups. A statement released by the ISF at the time of his assassination announced his expulsion from the organization for "debauchery." Zitouni had been feuding with fellow GIA terrorists, including Hadj Kartali and Abu Abd al-Rahim Khalid, and well as with leadership of the parent Islamic Salvation Front, the political and religious movement from which the GIA had been spawned. Deadly clashes between Zitouni's supporters and those of other GIA commanders were common during this time.

While Djamel Zitouni may have been a drunken libertine and rapist, it wasn't debauchery which got him killed. It was Zitouni's strategy of murdering family members of former GIA jihadists who had given up killing and surrendered to authorities. Islam is like the Mafia in this way. Once in, there is no way out. The Qur'an says: "If a Muslim abrogates his faith (ceasing to be a jihadist), kill him."

The assassinations of two Islamic Salvation Front politicians, Mohamed Said and Abderrezak Redjam, who Zitouni ordered murdered in November 1995, also contributed to Zitouni's problems. Both Said and Redjam had been members of the GIA before trying to leave the group.