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The head of the political committee of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) assured that two years after the group joined al Qaeda, AQIM has become a regional organization that enjoys the support and confidence of the top al Qaeda leadership.

Abu Abdel Ilah Ahmad’s comments came in a 38-minute audio interview released by the group Monday.

Ahmad refuted all the allegations reported in the media about the group weakening and losing ground by the day, and that many of its men have been turning themselves to the authorities in Algeria.

He insisted that the group has joined the global jihadi movement, that its influence extends beyond the Algerian territory and that it has gained the support of the public in Algeria, Mauritania and other countries.

Criticizing the recent presidential elections held in Algeria, Ahmad launched a scathing attack on the current Algerian regime, describing it as a “blend of soldiers and politicians who are intellectually and historically influenced by the French colonialism and more recently the American one.”

Hassan Hattab, the leader and founder of the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (SGPC), which later changed its name to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), launched a campaign aimed at convincing young Algerians to turn away from al Qaeda and benefit from the government’s Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation initiative.

Hattab decided to launch his campaign online, by creating a website specifically designed for this purpose. “You ought to know that what you do from shedding Muslim blood is only in the interests of the enemies of Islam and Muslims…it has nothing to do with Jihad, nor with Islam,” Hattab said in a statement posted on the blog called “the National Reconciliation in Algeria.

Hattab, who is known as Abu Hamza, has released an audio statement last February in which he appealed to AQIM members to lay down their arms and return to their families. Algerian authorities said his preaching has caused many of the militant group’s members to turn themselves to the authorities.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) released a new video from its series “Shadows of the Swords.” The 41-minute video is entitled “Lions of the Orient” and shows three new attacks carried out by the group against army and police personnel in Algeria.
The video included footage from a training camp, showing operatives undergoing firearm training and aiming their guns at posters of the Algerian President Bouteflika and U.S. President George Bush.
It also shows an attack on a National Guards’ outpost in Taghrout in eastern Algeria. The group’s leader was shown briefing his men and reviewing details of the operation over a sketched map of the area. Some night pictures of the assault on the outpost are then shown, with graphic images of the officers dead bodies. The booty display showed machine guns, ammunition, mobile phones and military IDs and uniforms. The group claims they killed five officers during the attack.
The second attack targeted a police convoy that was patrolling the city of Aftis on the eastern Algerian coast - an attack which left eight policemen dead, according to the group. The video shows 16 men - apparently coming from two different camps - preparing for the operation. It goes on to show two police vehicles being ambushed. The men who were inside came out running but were shot by the gunmen positioned in the mountains up above. Again, some graphic pictures of dead bodies, and the booty seized from the vehicle.
The third operation was also an attack on a police pick-up truck in the Setah area in eastern Algeria. The men sprayed the truck with bullets as it drove down a dirt road in the middle of the mountains. The driver was obviously hit and the vehicle veered off the road and into a ditch. Bodies of three men were pulled out of the vehicle which was subsequently set alight by the gunmen.
The date of the attacks was not given by the group, but according to press reports the first and second operations may have taken place around June 2008. The media reported only four casualties at the time however.
The video also included excerpts from an old video by al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. It then criticised what it said was a media bias against the Islamist militants, referring specifically to a report released by West Point ’s CTC called the “Militant Ideology Atlas” which mentioned the importance of funding the media campaign against the militants to expose them before the Muslim public.

A new video released by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and obtained by CBS News shows a series of IED attacks carried out by the group, including one that derailed a train. Although this is not the first time that the group resorted to IED explosions, the large amount of them indicates a shift to the less risky IED attacks from the traditional suicide car bombs. Some of the IED explosion shots seen in the 40-minute video were strikingly similar to those seen in Iraqi insurgency videos.

The video also exposes a new tactic used by the group. In almost every attack seen on the tape, the group planted two devices; one to attack a primary target followed by a second to attack a larger number of troops who gather to rescue the victims hurt in the first explosion.

The tape, which is entitled “The War of the Bombs and the Mines,” is part of a series called “The Shadows of the Swords” and opens with an introduction that featured excerpts from statements by some renowned al Qaeda sympathizers, as well as the group’s leader Abu Mus’ab Abdel Wadud, in which he denounces the Algerian regime and the country’s military chiefs.

The leader of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) Abu Mus’ab Abdel Wadud, warned of new attacks in an audiotape released on militant Islamist forums Monday. In the 28-minute tape “A Message to Our People in the Islamic Maghreb,” he pledged to keep up the fight against the governments in the Maghreb countries, and called on Muslims in those countries to support the militants. Abdel Wadud strongly criticized the Arab regimes in North Africa, from Mauritania to Libya , and described them as “puppet regimes” serving the interests of their “masters” in the West. He particularly denounced France’s efforts to create the Euro-Mediterranean alliance, which he qualified as a plan to revive France’s colonial ambitions.

Abdel Wadud also denied accusations that the militants were targeting innocent civilians, and asked his audience not to hang around government institutions and other buildings that constitute “legitimate targets.”

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) accused the Algerian government of standing behind the forest fires that broke out in eastern Algeria in the past few weeks. The group said in an Internet statement that it will soon release a video as evidence of the armyʼs implication in the fires. Fires have destroyed more than ten thousand hectares of forest in Algeria within one week. Last year, villagers blamed the army for starting forest fires during their campaign on Islamists on the run in the areas east of the capital Algiers.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) released claiming responsibility for the recent bomb attacks in Algiers and Boumerdes in a statement it posted on the Internet along with pictures of the two suicide bombers.

The group claimed the three attacks killed two Frenchmen and 37 Algerian soldiers and warned of further attacks against the Algerian government forces. It dedicated the operation to one of its commanders called Abdul Rahman al Thulathi, who was killed by Algerian security forces.

The statement said the first attack on June 4th, against a casern of the Algerian Republican guards in the Kaifan tower in the capital, was carried out by Yusuf Abu Baseer Al Aasmi, who blew himself at the main gate. A few moments later, the second suicide bomber Ibrahim Al Adham, blew himself up in a in the café killing a group of soldiers who were sitting there.

The group says a bomb was used in the second operation on June 5th to attack targeted an army convoy in Raas Janaat (Boumerdes). The third operation targeted two Frenchmen working for Razel in Beni Imraan (Boumerdes) according to the statement.

AQIM was created out of militant Algerian group, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC). In Sept. of 2006, al Qaeda’s number two Ayman al Zawahri announced in a videotape that the terror group’s leader Osama bin Laden had approved of the group’s merger with al Qaeda.

The group has been responsible for numerous attacks and kidnappings in North Africa since January 2007. They were held responsible for the deadly Algiers bombings of April and December of 2007. Moreover, the group succeeded in expanding its operations beyond the Algerian frontiers, murdering French tourists in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott in December 2007 and kidnapping two Austrian tourists in Tunisia last February.

A banner posted on several jihadist Internet forums by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) announced the imminent release of a new video from the training Camp of ‘Martyr Abi Ibrahim Mostafa.’ According to the banner, the video is part of a series entitled “Be Prepared.”

Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb was operating as the Salafi Group of Preaching and Combat (GSPC) until Ayman al Zawahri announced in a videotape released on Sept. 11, 2006 that Osama Bin Laden had approved of the group’s merger with al Qaeda.

The GSPC was established by Hassan Hattab in 1998 after he had broken ranks with the GIA. In September 2003, he was removed as national leader and replaced by Nabil Sahraoui, who like Hattab, was also a former GIA commander.

Sahraoui pledged allegiance to al Qaeda as early as 2003; he was then killed in June 2004 and replaced by the current leader of the al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb Abu Musaab Abdul Wadud. It is rumoured that Osama Bin Laden funded the Algerian Islamist groups in the 1990s and was instrumental in the formation of the GSPC.

Al Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb threatens to turn into a global Jihadi group. The group has claimed responsibility for several attacks, including a number of suicide attacks in Algeria which killed dozens.