Ex-rebel boss surrenders
07/10/2007 16:41  - (SA)  

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Algiers - Algeria has announced the surrender of the founder of the country's largest rebel group in a bid to hit the morale of the al Qaeda-linked insurgency, but analysts fear it will do little to slow the pace of attacks.

During a visit to France last week, Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni disclosed that Hassan Hattab, founder of the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), had given himself up to try to benefit from an amnesty.

"He gave himself up on September 22. We view him as a repentant person," he said, adding Hattab still faced potential investigations into some alleged past offences.

Some form of protective detention

Analysts noted that Hattab, 40, inactive as a fighter even before he was sacked as leader in 2003, has been in negotiations with the army over his surrender for years.

Officials have said Hattab has been in a "special location" known to the security services - remarks interpreted by some analysts as acknowledgement that he has been in effect under some form of protective detention during the talks.

"I doubt that Hattab's surrender will have any impact on the GSPC. He was not 'in business' since 1999," security specialist and editor Mounir Boudjema told Reuters. "But on the political level, it shows that Bouteflika's peace offer is a success."

Founded in 1998, the GSPC began as an offshoot of another armed group that was waging a revolt to establish an Islamic state in the north African oil- and gas-exporting country.

The revolt began in 1992 after the army-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist party was set to win.

Up to 200 000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed.

In January 2007, the GSPC renamed itself Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb and in subsequent months carried out several suicide bombings that killed dozens including a failed attempt to assassinate President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Hattab was succeeded by Nabil Sahraoui, who was killed by the security forces soon afterwards. Sahraoui was succeeded by the current leader of the group, Abdelmalek Droudkel, the architect of the group's affiliation to al Qaeda.

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