ALGIERS, 18 April 2007 — Algerians held a series of nationwide rallies yesterday to condemn Al-Qaeda suicide attacks that killed 30 people and raised fears of a return to the country’s violent past. Thousands of people gathered in the capital’s Olympic Stadium with banners reading “the fight against terrorism continues” and “yes to national reconciliation” six days after the capital was rocked by three suicide blasts.
Images of other rallies around the country were also broadcast live on television. They showed hundreds of veiled women at the head of the marches carrying Algeria’s flag and pictures of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Bouteflika is the architect of the country’s national reconciliation program that largely brought an end to the years of bloodshed during the 1990s, when guerrillas fought the military.
It offered amnesties to those who left the various Islamic militia that had battled Algeria’s armed forces in a conflict leaving tens of thousands dead. Last Wednesday’s attacks were claimed by an Algerian militant movement that took the name of Al-Qaeda’s North African branch. The violence has reignited a debate over Bouteflika’s policy that the national protests are intended to extinguish.
Meanwhile, in comments reported yesterday, Algerian Interior Minister Noureddine Zerhouni said that one of the three suicide bombs might have been set off remotely. Zerhouni said that evidence of the remote control device had been discovered in one of the three cars used in the explosions, which targeted the prime minister’s office in Algiers and two other locations in the capital.
“With this discovery, one plausible hypothesis is that the bombs were not detonated by the terrorist car drivers but by someone else not far from the disaster,” Zerhouni said in comments reported in yesterday’s press. The minister did not say in which vehicle evidence of the device was found.
Zerhouni was quoted in the Jour d’Algerie daily as saying that so far investigations had shown the vehicles used in the explosions had come from abroad and that the perpetrators had been “manipulated.” However, an Interior Ministry statement released yesterday said that all three cars were registered in Algeria and that all three suicide bombers were Algerian.
“These desperate terrorists resorted to suicide attacks for spectacular effect to prove that they’re still around,” Zerhouni said. “Terrorism is weakening because sowing death like they did last week shows that they are desperate.”
Police also revealed yesterday a mobile phone text alert system, which Algerians can use to report anything suspicious. “Dear citizen, our brothers suffer from the remnants of a terrorist (group) which is on the run. You must call to warn of any threat. Call 1590 free,” the text message to all Algeria’s mobiles said.
