Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Africa North

LNA Forces Arrest Al Qaeda Commander in Southern Libya

2020-11-29

[LIBYAREVIEW] On Saturday, the General Command of the Libyan National Army (LNA) announced the arrest of seven bully boyz affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Ubari, southwestern Libya.In a statement, LNA front man Ahmed al-Mismari said that Special Operations units of the Tariq Bin Ziyad Brigade and the 116th Infantry Brigade carried out an operation earlier on Saturday in the al-Taraqin al-Sharib neighborhoods of southwestern Libya, targeting bad boy hideouts.

Al-Mismari pointed out that seven AQIM holy warriors were arrested, including Hassan al-Washi, an al-Qaeda Commander who returned from Mali during the past week, and Omar Washi.

He noted that LNA forces seized large quantities of ammunition, weapons and very important documents.

The LNA front man said that this operation comes within the framework of security operations aimed at pursuing and eliminating Takfiri

...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who must be killed...
terrorist cells, enforcing the law, maintaining control over its entire geographical territory, securing its citizens, and achieving and preserving national security.

Link

Africa North

Islamist pleads guilty to Mali hotel, restaurant attacks

2020-10-31

[Jpost] A Mauritanian suspected jihadist pleaded guilty on Wednesday to shooting dead five people in an attack in the Malian capital Bamako in 2015 and planning two other attacks in the country that year that targeted Westerners and killed 37 more people.

In a court appearance in Bamako on Wednesday, Fawaz Ould Ahmed described in detail how he carried out the attack on La Terrace restaurant in March 2015.

He said he was also involved in planning a raid that killed 17 at Hotel Byblos in the town of Sevare in August and another that killed 20 people at Bamako's Radisson Blu hotel that November.

The attacks marked a brazen new phase in jihadist operations across West Africa, in which top hotels and tourist destinations frequented by Western tourists, aid workers and diplomats were no longer considered safe.

"I regret nothing," Ahmed told the court, adding that he had been seeking Dire Revenge for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad printed in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo
...

A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...
In January 2015, two months before Ahmed's first attack, Islamist Death Eaters in Gay Paree had stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo and rubbed out 12 people because of the cartoons.

Ahmed described taking a taxi to La Terrasse restaurant and carrying out the shooting.

"On arrival I went to the toilets, put on a balaclava, took out my Kalashnikov and shot those unbelievers," he said.

At the time, Death Eater groups Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Mourabitoun grabbed credit for the attacks in Mali as well as for attacks on a restaurant in neighboring Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
's capital Ouagadougou and a beach resort town in Ivory Coast.

That’s ok — the Malian al-Mourabitoune is an Al Qaeda in North Africa affiliate.

Ahmed was captured in Bamako in 2016 as he was preparing to carry out another attack armed with grenades and a suitcase filled with weapons on behalf of al Mourabitoun, according to local authorities.

If convicted of the charges including murder and complicity in murder, Ould Ahmed and the one other suspect could face the death penalty

Link

Africa North

Seven Islamist militants surrender in southern Algeria: Ministry

2018-06-21

[AlAhram] Seven Islamist murderous Moslems surrendered to Algerian authorities on Wednesday near the North African country's border with Mali, the defence ministry said.

Security forces recovered arms including six Kalashnikov assault rifles, the ministry said in a statement.

Violence has declined in Algeria since the 1990s, when a conflict between the state and Islamist turbans killed an estimated 200,000 people.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and small bands of fighters allied to Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(IS) murderous Moslems are still active in some remote areas.

Link

Africa North

Tunisian forces kill top aide of Al Qaeda leader in Maghreb

2018-01-22

[Ynet] Tunisian security forces have killed a top aide of Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an official source told Rooters on Saturday.

Tunisia has been on high alert since 2015, when Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
button men killed dozens of foreign tourists in a museum in the capital, Tunis, and on a beach in the resort city of Sousse.

Algerian Bilel Kobi was "the right arm of Abou Wadoud" and was killed in an ambush near the Algerian border when on a mission to reorganize AQIM's Tunisian branch following strikes by Tunisian forces against it, the source told Rooters.

Last year Tunisian forces killed Islamist holy warriors including Mourad Chaieb, the Algerian leader of Okba Ibn Nafaa, a group that has fought for years with security forces in Tunisia's mountainous interior.

The country also faces a potential threat from Tunisian holy warriors returning from abroad. More than 3,000 are thought to have left to fight for jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya over the past years.

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

Two Navy Seals Suspected of Murder Of Green Beret in Mali

2017-10-30

[NYTIMES] WASHINGTON — Navy criminal authorities are investigating whether two members of the elite SEAL Team 6 strangled an Army Green Beret in June while they were in Mali on a secret assignment, military officials say.

Staff Sgt. Logan J. Melgar, a 34-year-old veteran of two tours in Afghanistan, was found dead on June 4 in the embassy housing he shared in the Malian capital, Bamako, with a few other Special Operations forces assigned to the West African nation to help with training and counterterrorism missions.

The Navy SEALs’ potential involvement also raised the prospect of a highly unusual killing of an American soldier by fellow troops, and threatened to stain SEAL Team 6, the famed counterterrorism unit that carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Sergeant Melgar’s superiors in Stuttgart, Germany, almost immediately suspected foul play, and dispatched an investigating officer to the scene within 24 hours, military officials said. Agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command arrived soon after and spent months on the case before handing it off last month to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

No one has been charged in Sergeant Melgar’s death, which a military medical examiner ruled to be “a homicide by asphyxiation,” or strangulation, said three military officials briefed on the autopsy results. The two Navy SEALs, who have not been identified, were flown out of Mali shortly after the episode and were placed on administrative leave.

According to military officials, Sergeant Melgar was part of a small team in Bamako assigned to help provide intelligence about Islamic militancies in Mali to the United States ambassador there, Paul A. Folmsbee, to protect American personnel against attacks. The sergeant also helped assess which Malian Army troops might be trained and equipped to build a counterterrorism force.

Sergeant Melgar, a native of Lubbock, Tex., was about four months into what military officials said was a six-month tour in Mali, and was living with three other American Special Operations troops in a house provided by the American Embassy.

Two of those housemates were members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, which has over the past decade carried out kill-or-capture missions in Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, as well as the one that killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011.

According to two senior American military officials, the two SEAL commandos were in Mali with the approval of Mr. Folmsbee in a previously undisclosed and unusual clandestine mission to support French and Malian counterterrorism forces battling Al Qaeda’s branch in North and West Africa, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, as well as smaller cells aligned with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. The Americans helped provide intelligence for missions, and had participated in at least two such operations in Mali this year before Sergeant Melgar’s death.

Those who knew Sergeant Melgar described him as a soldier’s soldier — he deployed to Afghanistan twice on training missions between July 2014 and February 2016, according to his Army service record — and a devoted father who texted and talked via Skype multiple times a day with his wife while serving overseas.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger

2017-10-05

Reminder that some people do more than a sad face and hashtag campaign. RIP, heroes
Three United States Army Special Forces were killed and two were wounded on Wednesday in an ambush in Niger while on a routine patrol with troops they were training from that nation in northwestern Africa, American military officials said.

"We can confirm reports that a joint U.S. and Nigerien patrol came under hostile fire in southwest Niger," Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Falvo, a spokesman for the United States Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said in an email.

A United States military official said that three Army Green Berets were killed in the attack, which took place 120 miles north of Niamey, the capital of Niger, near the border with Mali, where militants with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, have conducted cross-border raids. Two other Green Berets were wounded, another military official said. Niger's troops were also believed to have suffered casualties, but details were not immediately known.

The deaths mark the first American casualties in a mission in which United States Special Forces have provided training and security assistance to the Nigerien armed forces, including support for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

The military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss continuing military operations, said American forces were rushing to the scene of the ambush, presumably to evacuate American and Nigerien casualties, and possibly to hunt down the attackers.

Link

Africa North

Morocco: Three-man Terrorist Cell Dismantled in Tetuan

2017-04-23

[North Africa Post] The Moroccan Interior Ministry Friday announced it dismantled in the Northern city of Tetuan a three-man cell connected to Daech that was preparing attacks against institutions and security authorities.

The operation was led by the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ), the judicial arm of the domestic intelligence service.

According to the early investigation findings, the leader of the cell, a graduate in sciences, well trained in the making of explosives fitted with remote detonator systems, was on the verge of acquiring substances used in the making of bombs, the ministry said.

The trio was preparing to attack Moroccan institutions as well as security authorities, the ministry’s statement said, adding that the BCIJ squad seized in the operation some equipment as well as electronical items used in the production of remotely controlled explosives.

Bladed weapons, cells phones as well as a bottle containing a suspicious liquid were also seized during the raid.

This is the second operation by BCIJ forces so far this month. A week ago, security forces nabbed seven bully boyz in the city of Fez and nearby town of Moulay Yacoub.

The cell members were trying to recruit volunteers for the terrorist Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group, the interior ministry announced.

Morocco’s counterterrorism strategy is based on vigilant security measures, regional and international cooperation, and counter-radicalization policies.

The BCIJ has dismantled multiple groups with ties to international networks that included ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Link

Africa North

Suicide blast kills 33 at north Mali military camp

2017-01-19

[Bangla Daily Star] At least 33 people were killed and dozens injured on Wednesday when a jacket wallah detonated a vehicle packed with explosives near a military camp in Mali's northern city of Gao, witnesses and a United Nations
...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly...
peacekeeping source said.

A Rooters news hound who arrived at the camp soon after the blast, which occurred at about 9 am (0900 GMT), said he saw dozens of bodies lying on the ground alongside the maimed.

Ambulances rushed to the scene as helicopters circled overhead.

"It's terrible," Gao resident Kader Touré said. "The attack happened while they were having an assembly. I've just left the hospital where there were bodies ripped to pieces and bodies piled up."

The army put the provisional toll at 25 but a source in the UN MINUSMA peacekeeping force said at least 33 were killed.

The camp was home to government soldiers and members of various rival gangs which jointly patrol Mali's restive desert north in line with a UN-brokered peace accord.

A French-led military intervention in 2013 drove back Islamist Lion of Islams, including al Qaeda-linked groups, which had seized northern Mali a year earlier.

However,
it's easy to be generous with someone else's money...
Islamist Death Eaters still operate in the region and insecurity is aggravated by tensions between local rebel groups and pro-government militias.

French interior minister Bruno Le Roux described the blast as a "major and highly symbolic attack" in an area visited only days ago by French President Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist....

Al Qaeda says Mali bombing punishment for working with France

[Ynet] Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said in a statement on Wednesday that a suicide kaboom that killed dozens in northern Mali was punishment for groups there cooperating with La Belle France, according to a translation released by the SITE Intelligence Group.

The statement confirmed that the attack had been carried out by al Mourabitoun, an ally of al Qaeda's North African affiliate, and gave the bomber's name as Abdul Hadi al-Fulani. Malian state media had earlier said there were five bombers.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

Suspect in Ivory Coast al Qaeda attack arrested in Mali

2017-01-13

[REUTERS] Authorities in Mali have tossed in the clink
Please don't kill me!
a man believed to be linked to an al Qaeda attack on a beach resort town in neighboring Ivory Coast that killed 19 people early last year, Malian security officials said on Thursday.

The attack took place on March 13th; Ansar Dine/AQIM was suspected. Our first report on the subject was published the next day.

Gunmen shot swimmers and sunbathers in the town of Grand Bassam, 40 km (25 miles) from the commercial capital Abidjan, last March before storming into several hotels.

The suspect was arrested in the town of Gossi in northern Mali by French soldiers involved in a regional operation against Islamist Lion of Islam groups and was then handed over to Malian authorities.

Defence ministry front man Colonel Aboudoulaye Sidibe gave the suspect's name as Mimi Ould Baba Ould Cheick.

"He was arrested by the French forces and transferred to the gendarmerie, which is carrying out investigation to determine the degree of his implication in the attack. He's being brought to (the capital) Bamako now," he said.

The arrest was confirmed to Rooters by Security Minister Salif Traore.

Both Ivory Coast and Mali have arrested suspects in the wake of the attack. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Islamist group's North African branch, grabbed credit and said it was Dire Revenge for La Belle France's military intervention in Mali.

Eleven Ivorians, including three special forces' soldiers, died in the attack. Four French citizens were killed and other foreign victims included citizens of Germany, Leb, Macedonia and Nigeria.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

Ivory Coast gunmen who killed 16 had sights set on Obama official, source says

2016-03-14

[FOXNEWS] A deadly attack on a popular Ivory Coast beach resort Sunday that killed at least 16 most likely targeted a U.S. delegation led by the assistant commerce secretary, who was visiting the country, a diplomatic source in the region told Fox News.

Now this makes sense. Qaeda hard boys hitting a beach in subsaharan Africa doesn't make sense. But if a U.S. delegation is going to be there? Major score...

There was no indication any Americans had been killed or maimed in the attack, according to the source.

Assistant Secretary of Commerce Marcus Jadotte was leading a group of Americans in Grand-Bassam, including college recruiters from the University of Florida. U.S. embassy officials from the capital city of Abidjan were also included in the group, according to the source. The delegation was supposed to arrive at the scene of the attack, Etoile du Sud, a hotel popular with Westerners. The delegation had not yet made it to the hotel when the attack occurred.

A jihadist group called Ansar Dine, or "defenders of the faith," linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was suspected of the attack, according to the source.Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb later grabbed credit for the attack, according to a Jihad monitoring website cited by the News Agency that Dare Not be Named.

The US Embassy in Ivory Coast instructed all Americans to "shelter in place."

The U.S. ambassador to the Ivory Coast was not in the country at the time of the attack having left to attend a conference in Washington led by Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat, conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
But the deadly attack did leave 14 civilians and two special forces soldiers dead, as well as all six attackers, President Alassane Ouattara
...the current president-for-life of Ivory Coast. He actually beat his predecessor in an election before having to eject him from the presidential palazzo....
said, according to Rooters.

The attackers, who were "heavily armed and wearing balaclavas, fired at guests at the Etoile du Sud, a large hotel which was full of expats in the current heatwave," a witness told AFP.

Marcel Guy said he saw at least four gunnies with Kalashnikov rifles on the beach. He said one approached two children, and spoke in Arabic. One child knelt and prayed, the other child was rubbed out.

Rat bastards. Hunt them down.

"I was swimming when it started and I bravely ran away," said Dramane Kima, who showed video of the carnage to Rooters. He also took pictures of grenades and ammunition clips he believed were left behind by the gunnies.

Jacques Able, who identified himself as the owner of Etoile du Sud said one person had been killed at the hotel. A receptionist at Etoile du Sud hotel said the attacks happened on the beach.

"We don't know where they came from, and we don't know where they've gone," he said of the gunnies.

It gets more interesting, according to The Times of Israel:

In a message posted on its Telegram channels, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said three of its “heroes” had stormed the Grand-Bassam resort,

Who did the other three dead miscreants belong to?

according to SITE Intelligence Group, which is based just outside Washington.

“By the grace of Allah and His granting of success, three heroes from the knights of Qaedat al-Jihad in the Islamic Maghreb were able to storm the tourist resort ‘Grand Bassam,’ situated east of the city of Abidjan, in Ivory Coast,” the SITE Intelligence Group quoted AQIM as saying.

Link

Europe

Sixty-year-old French jihadist gets eight-year jail sentence

2015-05-16

[Ynet] A sixty-year-old Frenchie was sentenced to eight years in jail by a Gay Paree court on Friday for taking part in operations by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Northern Mali.

Gilles Le Guen admitted joining the bad boy group but said he left it after a couple of months. "At some point I was enthusiastic but quickly pulled back," he said during his trial. The father of eight from Brittany was convicted of taking part in AQIM propaganda and training, as well as in an attack on Diabaly in Northern Mali.

An Nahar adds background on the gentleman, and a photo of the stylish gentleman at the link:

The Gay Paree criminal court handed down the sentence to Gilles Le Guen -- the first conviction under a law passed at the end of 2012 allowing authorities to prosecute those suspected of waging Jihad abroad.

The former member of the French merchant navy was enjugged
Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please!
by special forces in late April 2013. At the time, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described him as a "drop-out who became a terrorist".

In October 2012, Le Guen appeared in traditional Moslem robes with a gun at his side in a video on a Mauritanian website in which he warned La Belle France, the United States and the United Nations
...the Oyster Bay money pit...
against military intervention in Mali to drive Islamists from the country's arid north.

Le Guen, a former heroine addict with a drawn face, showed little emotion as the sentence was handed down.

During his trial, he said he converted to Islam in 1982 but was opposed to any "application of Sharia law in a tyrannical fashion."

He said he had been "instrumentalized" by AQMI, whose members he described as "turbans without anything to offer to the people."

Despite voicing "religious admiration" for the later al-Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden
... who is now sometimes referred to as Mister Bones...
, whom he compared to Che Guevara, he said he was against hostage-taking, suicide kabooms and declared himself "incapable of killing."

Raised in a Catholic family, Le Guen converted to Islam at the age of 18 after a brief spell as a Hindu and "does not and will not pose -- when he gets out -- any danger for French and Western society," said his lawyer.

Link

Africa North

Former Al Qaeda Group Swears Fealty To ISIS In North Africa

2014-09-15

[Ynet] Algeria's Caliphate Soldiers led by Khaled Abu Suleimane break from al Qaeda, join ISIS; significant attacks considered unlikely.

A new gang calling itself the Caliphate Soldiers in Algeria has split from al Qaeda's North African branch and sworn loyalty to the radical breakaway group Islamic State fighting in Syria and Iraq.

A breakaway of key Algerian commanders from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM, would show deepening rivalry between al Qaeda's core command and the Islamic State over leadership of the transnational Islamist militancy.

In a communiqué, AQIM central region commander Khaled Abu Suleimane, whose real name is Gouri Abdelmalik, claimed leadership of the new group, joined by an AQIM commander of an eastern region in Algeria, where the al Qaeda wing has its base.

"You have in the Islamic Maghreb men if you order them they will obey you," Suleimane said in reference to His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us...
, the leader of the Islamic State. "The Maghreb has deviated from the true path."

The communiqué was posted on jihadi websites. Algerian officials did not immediately comment on the statement.

The Algeria splinter group is the latest to side with Baghdadi over al Qaeda's aging chieftain Ayman al-Zawahri, as the Islamic State appeals to younger Death Eaters with successes in gaining territory in Iraq and Syria.

Baghdadi, who has declared himself "Caliph" or head of state, fell out with al Qaeda in 2013 over its expansion into Syria, where his followers carried out beheadings, crucifixions, and mass executions.

For some Death Eaters, Islamic State's creation of a jihadi bastion spanning western Iraq and eastern Syria, and its strong online presence, compare with al Qaeda's failure for almost a decade to carry out a major attack in the West.

North African jihadists
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is just one of the fractured Death Eater groups operating in North Africa, which has been a source of thousands of young fighters travelling from Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to Syria and Iraq.

Algeria, which itself recovered from a decade of conflict against its own Islamist fighters during which some 200,000 people died, is a strong US ally in its fight against Death Eaters in the region.

But experts said the announcement will likely not have a major operational impact on the ground as AQIM has been focused on the Sahel region
... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas...
rather than OPEC member Algeria. Attacks are rarer now in Algeria though Death Eaters still have potential.

"The new group will try hard to make some noise, but it will be very difficult to execute big terrorist actions as Algerian security forces have knocked out most of the gangs in Algeria," local security analyst Anis Rahmani said.

But it may appeal to new Islamist recruits in the Maghreb seeking to fight in Syria and Iraq, where Baghdadi's forces now control large swaths of territory and towns.

The newly created "Caliphate Soldiers" or "Jound al Khilafa fi Ard al Jazayer" is the second group to break with AQIM, the first one being Mokhtar Belmokhtar's group "Those who sign in Blood" who observers say are likely based now in southern Libya.

Belmokhtar, a veteran Algerian Death Eater and former al Qaeda commander, was blamed for criminal masterminding the attack on Algeria's In Amenas gas plant in early 2013, in which 40 oil workers, most of them foreigners, were killed after a four-day siege.

Link

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