ALGIERS, 5 April 2007 — Algerian troops backed by helicopter gunships are carrying out their biggest offensive in years against extremists to stamp out a surge in attacks by an insurgency long thought in decline. Independent newspapers have reported more than a week of assaults by thousands of troops in the mountains and forests in the east of the North African country.
“We are waging the counterterror fight without letup,” President Abdelaziz Bouteflika told Spain’s El Pais daily a few days before the military campaign began last month. One goal is to kill or arrest Al-Qaeda-aligned rebels responsible for attacks on police and foreign workers that have dented confidence in the security of a country that is among Europe’s top oil and gas providers, the newspapers say.
Another is to cut ties between the rebels and like-minded Islamists around the Maghreb and among communities of North African descent in Europe seeking the capacity to attack Western targets on both sides of the Mediterranean, diplomats say.
The expansion of army activity is seen by some observers to reflect a hardening of attitudes inside the government toward the rebels, most of whom have dismissed years of peace overtures by Algiers that have included generous amnesty terms.
Meanwhile, an Algerian appeals court yesterday suspended a six-month jail sentence against two journalists from Ech-Chorouk in a libel case, which pit the private paper against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. The court also overturned an order suspending publication of the mass circulation daily for two months, removed a fine against it and cut damages it had to pay to 50,000 dinar ($700) from 50,0000 dinars.
The initial verdict by a lower court on Oct. 31 against Ech-Chorouk’s director, Ali Fodil, and journalist Naila Berrahal triggered criticism from human rights and press advocacy groups in Algeria and abroad.
“I am happy that the publication of the daily was not suspended but unhappy because of the six-month sentence I got, as well as Naila Berrahal, because I believe we are innocent and the information we published was accurate,” Fodil told Reuters in the court.
