PARIS, 5 July 2004 — Libyan secret services have discovered a desert operations camp belonging to an Al-Qaeda-linked group after “intercepting” some of its members near the border with Chad, a French newspaper said yesterday.
The paper, Le Journal du Dimanche, said a source close to the counter-espionage services of a European country said Libyan agents found the GSPC camp 10 days ago in the mountainous region of Tibesti, which spans Libya’s southern border with Chad.
Libya restored diplomatic ties with Washington last week after 24 years of enmity, after promising to scrap its weapons programs.
The French newspaper said the GSPC — the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat — was recruiting actively in the Tibesti region and buying arms and vehicles with ransom money paid for the release of European tourists taken hostage in the Sahara in 2003.
The GSPC is a militant group founded in 1998 in Algeria which is now regarded to have eclipsed the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria. It offered its support in October 2003 to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, security experts say.
GSPC leader Nabil Sahraoui and his three top aides were killed in late June in a gun battle with Algerian armed forces in eastern Algeria, in what analysts called a blow to Al-Qaeda’s ambitions in North Africa.
Le Journal du Dimanche drew a link between the camp that the Libyans had discovered and renewed talk of possible attacks on European and US targets in Africa.
“Above all, it appears that the GSPC is clearly preparing terrorist attacks in Africa, on American or European targets — including French ones — be they economic, diplomatic or tourist sites,” the newspaper said.
Bin Laden, in an audiotape on April 15, gave European states three months to pull troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim countries or face attacks such as the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people on March 11.
Militants claiming links to Al-Qaeda have vowed attacks on Europe once the “truce” expires on July 15.
Governments and analysts played down the threat, although a US intelligence official has said the risk should not be ignored or dismissed, regardless of the authenticity of the purported statement by the Abu Hafs Al-Masri Brigades.
