Recently in Algeria Category

Good thing al-Qaeda is on the ropes, as Obama assures us. Imagine what they'd be able to accomplish if they were strong, confident, and advancing. "Algeria gas pipeline attack kills two guards," by Alex Spillius in the Telegraph, January 28 (thanks to Alan of England):

Two security guards protecting a gas pipeline were killed and seven others wounded in an attack southwest of the Algerian capital, as Islamist terrorists once again targeted the country’s vital oil and gas industry.

Militants from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb launched a series of homemade rockets late on Sunday night towards a pipeline that runs north from the Sahara desert’s Hassi R’Mel field.

The largest in Algeria and the second largest gas field in the world, most of its product passes through coastal cities and on to southern Europe.

Army units were alerted and searched for the attackers in vain around Ain Chikh, on the southern edge of the Kabylie mountain region that has become the last hideout of al-Qaeda’s branch in northern Algeria. The frequency of terrorist attacks has dropped in Algeria’s populated north in the past few years, though in August 2011 militants showed their ability to target local security forces with a suicide bombing of the military academy....

Mohamed Merah was the sadistic jihadist who murdered seven people, including three Jewish children, in France last year. Now the jihadists responsible for the jihad mass murders at the Algerian gas plant are promising more such jihad massacres in France. "Jihadist group delivers chilling threat to France," from The Local, January 22 (thanks to Lookmann):

The jihadist group believed to be behind the deadly hostage siege in Algeria has issued a series of alarming threats against France, warning that last week’s mass kidnapping at the In Amenas gas plant was “only the beginning.”

Speaking to French weekly Paris Match, the spokesman for the cell known as "Those Who Sign In Blood", which is headed by notorious Mokhtar Belmokhtar said "French crusaders, Zionist Jews and their minions, will pay for their aggression against Muslims in northern Mali."

In a warning deliberately aimed to stir up fear in France, the spokesman, who called himself Joulaybib, said there would be repeats of recent terror attacks carried out on French soil by self-proclaimed Islamist extremists.

“I hope France realizes that there will be dozens of Merahs and Kelkals," Joulaybib said.

Mohamed Merah was the 23-year-old French-Algerian gunman who caused terror throughout France in March 2012, when he killed seven people, including three French soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish schoolchildren in the south-western cities of Toulouse and Montauban. Khaled Khelkal was an Algerian terrorist who took part in a series of bomb attacks on the Paris metro in 1995.

Joulaybib, a Mauritanian national whose real name, according to Paris Match, is Hacen Ould Khalil, also promised that “the In Amenas attack is only the beginning."

Speaking by telephone, the Islamist spokesman also laid out the hostage-takers' three demands; an end to the French offensive against Islamist militants in Mali, the release of ‘Blind Sheikh’ Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently imprisoned in the US for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, and the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist serving an 86-year jail sentence in the US....

In PJ Media this morning, I discuss the overlooked lessons of the recent Algeria jihad mass murders:

At the height of the hostage crisis in Algeria, one of the kidnappers explained: “We’ve come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is.” As of Sunday evening, this exercise in religious education had claimed eighty-one lives and left BP’s natural gas plant in Algeria in a state of ruin, booby-trapped with mines and explosives.

Further indication of the hostage-taker’s mindset came from one Algerian who escaped and later recounted: “The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels. We will kill them, they said.” According to the Telegraph, “They allowed locals to go free, saying they did not want to hurt Muslims. Some locals were forced to recite parts of the Koran to prove they were Muslims.”

Clearly the hostage-takers’ religion was important – indeed central – to their motives and goals for undertaking this savage attack; yet mainstream media coverage has followed the usual patterns, downplaying or ignoring outright what the attackers said about what they were hoping to accomplish, since these statements lead to questions about Islam that they would prefer not be asked.

Yet they must be asked: we have now in the last few months seen bloody massacres carried out in the name of Islam in at this natural gas plant and at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi; a brutal Sharia regime come to power in northern Mali; and escalating persecution of Christians in Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Muslim spokesmen and groups in the U.S. routinely dismiss concerns about such things by asserting that their view of Islam, and that of Muslims in the U.S. and the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, is completely different from that of the Muslims who perpetrate these attacks, and that therefore anyone who wonders if such violence in the name of Islam will ever become commonplace in the U.S. is simply “Islamophobic” and hateful.

Maybe so. Certainly this line has so thoroughly convinced government, law enforcement, and media elites that no discussion or dissent is permitted anymore from these claims, as if they were hallowed religious dogma. Nonetheless, it is ill-advised not to take the trouble to understand one who is determined to destroy you. The hostage-takers in Algeria said they wanted to teach Americans what Islam is. It would be foolish, and ultimately fatal, not to consider exactly what message they wanted us to get about Islam.

The core of the message may be found in a statement attributed in Islamic tradition to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam:

I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah. (Bukhari 1.2.24)

Muhammad must fight against people until they confess that Allah is the only god and Muhammad is his messenger, and if they do, their lives and property are safe from him – in other words, if one does not confess that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is prophet, one’s life and property are not safe from the Muslims. In taking hostages in the first place, moreover, the jihadis were on firm Islamic ground: kidnapping infidels and later deciding to kill them is fully sanctioned in Islamic law. “As for the captives,” says the Islamic jurist al-Mawardi’s Laws of Islamic Governance,

the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them.

There is more.

“This is the result of the Arab Spring. I hope the Americans are conscious of this.” They aren't. None of those who are in power are conscious of it, anyway.

"Some Algeria Attackers Are Placed at Benghazi," by Adam Nossiter for the New York Times, January 22 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

ALGIERS — Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the deadly attack on the United States Mission in Libya in September, a senior Algerian official said Tuesday.

The Egyptians involved in both attacks were killed by Algerian forces during the four-day ordeal that ended in the deaths of at least 38 hostages and 29 kidnappers, the official said. But three of the militants were captured alive, and one of them described the Egyptians’ role in both assaults under interrogation by the Algerian security services, the official said.

If confirmed, the link between two of the most brazen assaults in recent memory would reinforce the transborder character of the jihadist groups now striking across the Sahara. American officials have long warned that the region’s volatile mix of porous borders, turbulent states, weapons and ranks of fighters with similar ideologies creates a dangerous landscape in which extremists are trying to collaborate across vast distances.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday about the Libyan attack that killed the American ambassador and three staff members, raised the specter of regional cooperation among extremists soon after the mission in Benghazi was overrun.

In particular, she said the Islamist militant takeover of northern Mali had created a “safe haven” for terrorists to “extend their reach” and work with other extremists in North Africa, “as we tragically saw in Benghazi,” though she offered no clear evidence of such ties.

Now the Algerians say the plot to seize the gas complex in the desert was hatched in northern Mali as well. Indeed, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the veteran militant who has claimed overall responsibility for the siege, is believed to be based there.

But the Algerian official did not say why the captured kidnapper’s assertion — that some fighters had taken part in both the Benghazi and Algerian attacks — should be considered trustworthy. Nor did he say whether it was obtained under duress.

Instead, he focused on the chaos unleashed by the recent uprisings throughout the region, leaving large ungoverned areas where extremists can flourish.

“This is the result of the Arab Spring,” said the official said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because investigations into the hostage crisis were still under way. “I hope the Americans are conscious of this.”

American counterterrorism and intelligence officials have said that some members of Ansar al-Shariah, the group that carried out the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, had connections to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the militant groups now holding northern Mali. But American officials have also said that the Qaeda affiliate played no role in directing or instigating that Benghazi attack.

Similarly, Egyptian security officials said they believed that a longtime Islamist militant from Egypt was involved in the gas field attack, but the officials did not know of any connection to the Benghazi attack as well.

Algeria was firmly opposed to the Western intervention to help topple Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya in 2011, and this nation’s conservative leadership viewed the Arab Spring with deep suspicion, making no secret of its desire to avoid any such occurrences....

This means that they were hired at the plant and assumed to be "moderates" who would have no problem working for a Western-affiliated firm. No one even made any attempt to determine whether or not they were "extremists," as imperfect as any such attempt would necessarily have been. To have made such an attempt would have been "Islamophobic."

More on this story. "Islamist raid on gas plant was inside job, 2 Canadians among militants: Algeria," from PTI, January 22 (thanks to Twostellas):

The hostage-taking at a remote Algerian gas plant was carried out by 30 militants from across the northern swath of Africa and two from Canada, authorities said. The militants, who wore military uniforms and knew the layout, included explosives experts who rigged it with bombs and a leader whose final order was to kill all the captives.

The operation also had help with inside knowledge, a former driver at the plant, Algeria’s Prime Minister said yesterday.

In all, 38 workers and 29 militants died, the Algerian Pime [sic] Minister said yesterday, offering the Government’s first detailed account of four days of chaos that ended with a bloody military raid he defended as the only way possible to end the standoff. Five foreigners are still missing.

“You may have heard the last words of the terrorist chief,” Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal told presspersons. “He gave the order for all the foreigners to be killed, so there was a mass execution, many hostages were killed by a bullet to the head.”

Yesterday’s account offered the first Algerian Government narrative of the standoff, from the moment of the attempted bus hijacking on Wednesday to the moment when the attackers prepared Saturday to detonate bombs across the sprawling complex. That’s when Algerian special forces moved in for the second and final time.

All but one of the dead victims, an Algerian security guard, were foreigners. The dead hostages included seven Japanese workers, six Filipinos, three energy workers each from the US and Britain, two from Romania and one worker from France.

The Prime Minister said three attackers were captured but did not specify their nationalities or their conditions or say where they were being held.

He said the Islamists included a former driver at the complex from Niger and that the militants “knew the facility’s layout by heart.” The vast complex is deep in the Sahara, 800 miles south of Algiers, with a network of roads and walkways for the hundreds of workers who keep it running.

The attackers wore military uniforms, according to state television, bolstering similar accounts by former hostages that the attackers didn’t just shoot their way in.

“Our attention was drawn by a car. It was at the gate heading toward the production facility. Four attackers stepped out of a car that had flashing lights on top of it,” one of the former hostages, Liviu Floria, a 45-year-old mechanic from Romania, told The Associated Press.

The militants had said during the standoff that their band included people from Canada, and hostages who had escaped recalled hearing at least one of the militants speaking English with a North American accent.

In FrontPage this morning I discuss how the jihad mass murders in Algeria are the fruit of Obama’s foreign policy:

Jeremiah Wright was right after all. The Algeria jihad attack proves it.

Not long after the 9/11 jihad attacks, Barack Obama’s mentor and friend, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preached a sermon in which he uttered the now-notorious words: “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Wright meant, of course, that the U.S. had brought the attack upon itself by its own acts of violence against others: “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye… and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards.”

In a certain sense Wright was right: the U.S. did bring 9/11 on itself – but not in the way that he thought. The jihadists who destroyed the Twin Towers and damaged the Pentagon had not been brooding about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and no action by the U.S. did or could have justified the mass murder those jihadists perpetrated. If it could be truly said that the U.S. brought 9/11 on itself in any way, it was only by failing to recognize the implications of and to confront the ideology behind the jihad attacks that immediately preceded it.

There was an abundance of indicators of what was coming. In December 1988, an Islamic jihadist murdered 259 people, including 189 Americans, by bringing down Pam Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In February 1993, Islamic jihadists murdered six people and wounded over a thousand in their first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center towers. In June 1996, Islamic jihadists murdered nineteen people and wounded 515, including 240 Americans, in a bombing at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. In August 1998, Islamic jihadists bombed the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, murdering 291, including 12 Americans, in Nairobi, and murdering ten more and wounding 77 in Dar es Salaam. In October 2000, Islamic jihadists bombed the USS Cole in port at Aden, Yemen, murdering seventeen sailors and wounding 39.

In response to all this, the U.S. lobbed a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan and took out a chemical weapons factory (or aspirin factory, depending on one’s source) in Sudan, and did little more. No serious attempt was made to come to grips with the full nature and magnitude of the ideology that inspired those jihad attacks, and to work to neutralize its violent potential. And so it would have been more surprising if the 9/11 attacks hadn’t happened than that they did.

So it is today. Barack Obama has overseen the installation of Sharia regimes in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. While paying lip service to the importance of distinguishing jihadists from genuine democratic forces in Syria and elsewhere, the Obama administration has offered no criteria for doing this. And now al-Qaeda jihadists in Algeria have carried out a brazen assault on BP’s natural gas plant in that country, killing at least eighty-one people and demonstrating anew the falsehood of Barack Obama’s recent claim that in Afghanistan “we achieved our central goal … or have come very close to achieving our central goal, which is to de-capacitate al-Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can’t attack us again.”

There is more.

They most likely didn't consider themselves Canadians. They no doubt thought of themselves as members of the global, supranational umma.

Canada's newest export: jihad mass murderers. What are Muslim leaders in Canada doing to make sure that no more "Canadian" Muslims misunderstand Islam in the way these two did? Why, nothing. Nothing at all.

"Two Al Qaeda gunmen found dead inside Algeria gas plant were 'Canadians,'" by Peter Allen and Nabila Ramdani in the Daily Mail, January 20 (thanks to Michael Coren):

Two dead Islamist militants found inside the Algerian gas plant were Canadians, an Algerian security source said today.

Algerian special forces discovered the bodies at the In Amenas facility, where the combined death toll of hostages and insurgents rose to 89 today.

The source said documents found on them had identified the two militants as Canadians as forces scoured the plant following Saturday's bloody end to the crisis.

An official Algerian source said previously that the group behind the attack had comprised Arabs, Africans and also people from outside the African continent.

A report in Norway's Aftenposten also said one of the attackers was tall and white with blue or green eyes, spoke English and read the Koran.

Much remains unclear about events after the jihadists staged the attack last Wednesday.

However, an Algerian newspaper said they had arrived in cars painted in the colours of state energy company Sonatrach, but registered in neighbouring Libya, a country awash with arms since Muammar Gaddafi's fall in 2011.

Meanwhile, the hostage death toll rose from 23 to 57 today after 25 bodies found yesterday were reportedly identified as captives....

Details of the dead militants emerged after it was claimed some of the terrorists involved in the siege in which three Britons have died had been working at the BP plant where the atrocity took place.

They had been given short-term contracts by the oil and gas giant, allowing them to plan their attack with lethal precision.

Six of the Al Qaeda operatives were ‘taken alive’ by the Algerian army today, while some 32 were killed during four days of fierce fighting with special forces.

Now there are claims that some of the Islamist radicals had been hired over the past year at the vast facility in the Sahara desert, close to the town of In Amenas.

This raises the possibility that the 23 gas workers who died, as well as those who were wounded and escaped, might have known their attackers.

Witnesses have already described one of the terrorists speaking with a ‘perfect English accent’, and appearing to have a good knowledge of the compounds around the gas field.

An Algerian security source said: ‘The suspicion is that some of the militants were placed inside the plant as drivers, cooks and even guards.

‘This gave them detailed knowledge of the facility, and indeed its top level security measures.

‘There were many hundreds of workers of all nationalities at the site, and applications for work would have been made to BP. There would have been some kind of background checks, of course.’

BP would not comment on the claims, which have begun to appear in the Algerian media.

But the security source said that Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the Algerian terrorist said to have masterminded the operation, is thought to have coordinated the placing of his men inside the plant.

His Mulathameen Brigade today threatened to carry out more attacks unless Western powers ended what it called an assault on Muslims in neighbouring Mali, according to the SITE monitoring service.

In a statement on Monday, the al Qaeda linked group also said the hostage-takers had offered negotiations on freeing the captives seized at a gas plant deep in the Sahara but the Algerian authorities used military force, SITE reported....

His gang, the Signed in Blood Brigade, is a ruthless Islamist group which has been behind numerous crimes around Africa, including bomb attacks and kidnappings.

As with so many Al Qaeda operatives, many of its recruits would have considerable experience of infiltrating western targets....

Other Algerian officials insisted that the army launched its assault after the Islamist militants began killing foreign hostages they described as ‘Christians and infidels’....

In "Bloody jihad: Obama fiddles, Americans burn" in WND today, Pamela Geller blasts Obama for his lack of leadership in what amounted to an act of war: the Algeria jihad mass murders:

The Algerian hostage crisis came to a bloody end Saturday when Special Forces stormed the BP gas complex after the jihadists executed their non-Muslim POWs. At least 81 people have been killed, including two Americans. They were holding more than 600, but they released all the Muslims, saying “they did not want to hurt Muslims. Some locals were forced to recite parts of the Koran to prove they were Muslims.”

The jihadists called their non-Muslim hostages “kuffar,” an ugly word meaning unbelievers. One Muslim hostage said: “Us Algerians were rounded up separately and were treated with kindness. We were told that because we were Muslim we would not be killed, and it was only the Christians they were after. The Algerian hostages were then allowed to leave. … I saw many Brits killed. One Westerner trying to give first aid was blown up by the terrorists.” At least five of the jihadis were employees of the BP plant – which means they were thought to be “moderates.”

Yet despite the American loss of life, the president has not spoken of it or taken any leadership action on this act of war. The American media are following his lead. Every major world leader whose people were kidnapped and/or killed was addressing his parliament, media and the people of their countries: This act of war was a major news story everywhere except in America. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron canceled a trip to address the House of Commons, where he called the jihadist attack on the BP gas field “brutal and savage” (there’s that word again), and said the assault on the complex was “large, well-coordinated and heavily armed.” Coordinated by whom? Al-Qaida jihadists.

Obama said recently: “We achieved our central goal, or have come very close to achieving our central goal, which is to de-capacitate al-Qaida, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can’t attack us again.” Yet while claiming that al-Qaida is being “de-capacitated,” he is supplying them. The Algerian jihadis had weapons from Libya – that means we supplied them. Obama has consistently supported jihadists in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Burma, et al. Just as this led to the murder of Americans in Libya, so it has now in Algeria. The attackers who stormed our consulate (or whatever that building really was) in Benghazi were part of al-Qaida. While he tells us al-Qaida is vanquished, their attacks become more lethal, widespread and brazen.

The jihadis in Algeria were a multinational group – emphasizing yet again that this is an ideological war, not a geographical one. A hostage said: “Of the terrorists, one was an Egyptian, another was Libyan and one was Syrian. Most of them were Algerian, but some of them had white skin and I think they were Canadian. Two were speaking fluent English.”

The Obama administration was neither advised nor consulted on the raid on the al-Qaida jihadists ahead of time: further proof of our diminished hegemony and the lack of respect Obama has engendered for America across the world.

Al-Qaida in Algeria was demanding a “trade” for the lives of non-Muslims. They wanted the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, and Aafia Siddiqui, Lady al-Qaida. The release of effective jihadists is an objective of the global jihad: Muslim agitation and violence for the blind sheikh is widespread. On Sept. 11, 2012, Muslims stormed our embassy in Cairo and raised the flag of jihad over our embassy for the same reason. (Obama’s response was to apologize for hurting Muslim feelings.)

Read it all.

Apparently no one checked to make sure they were "moderates." To have done so would have been "Islamophobic." In any case, they would probably have been able to fool any such investigators easily.

"Algeria hostage crisis: al Qaeda had help from inside claim security sources," by Abdelatif Belkayem and Henry Samuel in the Telegraph, January 20 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Up to five of the al Qaeda-linked Islamists who carried out the most spectacular and bloody hostage in recent years were employees of the gas plant, security sources have revealed.

One of those involved in the "inside job" was of French nationality, the sources told the Daily Telegraph, in what appears to be a blow to those in charge of safety at the highly strategic In Amenas plant, which accounts for 12 per cent of Algeria's gas production.

The unnamed French accomplice is said to have changed sides once his comrades in arms had broken into the desert site in southeastern Algeria after attacking bus at a false checkpoint. He then took part in the kidnapping operation before being killed during the Algerian army assault on the site.

Some terrorists are reported to have known internal procedures at the plant as well as the room numbers of expatriates.

Gendarmes are understood to have opened an investigation into four other workers who survived the attack on suspicion of helping the kidnappers enter the tightly-guarded facility, the sources said, without providing further details....

Last night, bomb squads were still combing the area for explosive devices, with the army saying the kidnappers had placed mines beneath the sand around the factory to hinder the army's advance, but also inside the plant.

Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company running the Ain Amenas site along with BP and Norway's Statoil, confirmed the entire refinery had been mined.

"They had decided to succeed in the operation as planned, to blow up the gas complex and kill all the hostages," said communications minister Mohamed Said.

The revelation though of the possibility of an 'inside job" follows expressions of surprise by security experts at the apparent ease with which the terrorists loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed Islamist who formed his own brigade, the "Signatories in Blood", penetrated the plant. It was the first successful terrorist attack against a petrol or gas plant in Algeria.

"These installations are highly protected. The operation must have been prepared over quite some time. Either there was a slip up or it was internal complicity," said Louis Caprioli, adviser at GEOs, the risk management group and a former domestic intelligence agent.

A spokesman for BP refused to be drawn on the possible security beach: "We wouldn't comment on this," he said.

Last night it was confirmed that the apparent leader of the militants, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, was ready at any time to blow up the hostages. Another of the kidnappers was identified as Abdallahi Ould Hmida....

As Hamas-linked CAIR assures us that jihad means staying fit despite one's busy schedule, the jihad has claimed twenty-five more victims in Algeria. Apparently the exercise was very strenuous. "25 more bodies found at Algerian plant," from the Associated Press, January 20 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

ALGIERS, Algeria — The death toll from the bloody terrorist siege at a natural gas plant in the Sahara climbed to at least 81 on Sunday as Algerian forces searching the complex for explosives found dozens more bodies, many so badly disfigured they could not immediately be identified, a security official said.

Algerian special forces stormed the facility on Saturday to end the four-day siege of the remote desert refinery, and the government said then that 32 militants and 23 hostages were killed, but that the death toll was likely to rise.

The militants came from six countries, were armed to cause maximum destruction and mined the Ain Amenas refinery, which the Algerian state oil company runs along with BP and Norway's Statoil, said Algerian Communications Minister Mohamed Said. The militants "had decided to succeed in the operation as planned, to blow up the gas complex and kill all the hostages," he said in a state radio interview....

The Algerian security official said the 25 bodies found by bombs squads on Sunday were so badly disfigured that it was difficult to tell whether they were hostages or attackers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation and said those casualties were not official yet.

The squads were bombing the plant in the Sahara Desert to defuse mines they said were planted throughout the vast site, not far from the Libyan border....

The Masked Brigade, founded by Algerian militant Moktar Belmoktar, claimed responsibility for the attack. Belmoktar claimed the attack in the name of al-Qaida, according to the text from a video the Mauritania-based Internet site, Sahara Media, said it had obtained. The site sometimes carries messages of jihadists.

"We at al-Qaida are responsible for this operation that we bless," Sahara Media quoted the video as saying. The video was dated Jan. 17, a day after the attack began. Belmoktar recently created his own group in a schism with associated in al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, but his statement appears to show his link with the terror group's motherhouse and put the stamp of global jihad on the action by a special commando unit, "Those Who Sign in Blood."

Lesson learned. "Hostages Dead in Bloody Climax to Siege in Algeria," by Adam Nossiter for the New York Times, January 19:

BAMAKO, Mali — The four-day hostage crisis in the Sahara reached a bloody conclusion on Saturday as the Algerian Army carried out a final assault on the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing most of the remaining kidnappers and raising the total of hostages killed to at least 23, Algerian officials said....

One Algerian who managed to escape told France 24 television late Friday night that the kidnappers said, “We’ve come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is.” The haggard-looking man, interviewed at the airport in Algiers, said the kidnappers then immediately executed five hostages....

That was his jihad; what's yours? "Jihad ‘Prince,’ a Kidnapper, Is Tied to Raid," by Steven Erlanger and Adam Nossiter for the New York Times, January 17:

PARIS — His entourage calls him “the Prince,” and after the militant Islamist takeover of a town in northern Mali last year, he liked to go down to the river and watch the sunset, surrounded by armed bodyguards.

Others call him “Laaouar,” or the One-Eyed, after he lost an eye to shrapnel; some call him “Mr. Marlboro” for the cigarette-smuggling monopoly he created across the Sahel region to finance his jihad. And French intelligence officials called him “the Uncatchable” because he escaped after apparently being involved in a series of kidnappings in 2003 that captured 32 European tourists, an undertaking which is thought to have earned him millions of dollars in ransoms.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, 40, born in the Algerian desert city of Ghardaïa, 350 miles south of Algiers, is now being called the mastermind of the hostage crisis at an internationally run natural-gas facility in eastern Algeria.

Algerian officials say he mounted the assault and the mass abduction of foreigners; his spokesmen say the raid is in reprisal for the French intervention in Mali and for Algeria’s support for the French war against Islamist militants in the Sahel.

Mr. Belmokhtar has been active in politics, moneymaking and fighting for decades in the Sahel, which includes Mali, Mauritania and Niger and is one of the poorest regions in the world. But through this single action, one of the most brazen kidnappings in years, he has suddenly become one of the best-known figures associated with the Islamist militancy sweeping the region and agitating capitals around the world.

The 1989 killing in Pakistan of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a Palestinian considered the “father of global jihad” and a mentor of Osama bin Laden, prompted Mr. Belmokhtar to seek to avenge Mr. Azzam’s death, he has said in interviews. At 19 he traveled to Afghanistan for training with Al Qaeda, and has claimed in interviews to have made contact with other jihadi luminaries like Abu Qatada and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, according to a 2009 Jamestown Foundation study. Bin Laden made contact with him, through emissaries, in the early 2000s, according to Djallil Lounnas, who teaches at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco....

Mr. Belmokhtar was falsely reported to have been killed in 1999. Nearly a decade later, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which he joined, adopted the jihadist ideology of Bin Laden and renamed itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Mr. Belmokhtar is considered to have been a key intermediary with Al Qaeda and a well-known supplier of weapons and matériel in the Sahara.

But he clearly does not share authority easily, and left or was removed from his post as commander of a battalion in Mali last October, reportedly for “straying from the right path,” according to a Malian official, quoting the leader of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel.

The dispute was about Mr. Belmokhtar’s return to smuggling and trafficking. Dominique Thomas, a specialist in radical Islam, told Le Monde that Mr. Belmokhtar’s activities ran counter to the group’s official line, which presents itself as entirely virtuous.

Mr. Belmokhtar then founded his new group, which he allied with the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, another Islamist group that had broken off from Al Qaeda.

Some suggest that his expertise has been more in criminal activities than in holy warfare. Kidnapping and smuggling — of cigarettes, stolen cars, arms and drugs — have been his specialties in the vast and largely lawless border regions. He was said to be central to hostage-takings and subsequent negotiations for their release in 2003, 2008 and 2009....

In an interview with the Mauritanian news agency Alakhbar in Gao in November, Mr. Belmokhtar said he respected “the clearly expressed choice” of the people of northern Mali “to apply Islamic Shariah law.” He warned against foreign interference, saying that any country that did so “would be considered as an oppressor and aggressor who is attacking a Muslim people applying Shariah on its territory.”...

Al-Qaeda wanted to send the message that it could strike anywhere in the Sahara. This comes just after Obama said they were essentially already defeated.

"Kidnappers said were after ‘crusaders’ not Algerians: freed hostage," from Al Arabiya, January 19 (thanks to Voice of the Copts):

Al-Qaeda-linked militants, who kidnapped hundreds of workers at a gas plant in the Algerian desert, said they were after “crusaders” and not Algerian nationals, one of the released hostages told Al Arabiya in an interview on Saturday.

The freed Algerian hostage also said that Algerians were treated better than foreigners as they were allowed to use their phones and were promised that they will be released shortly.

“We [Algerians] did what we wanted, they did not tell us to switch off our cellphones, or interrogated us. They told us to sit down and that they were not after Algerians but after what they called crusaders,” the former hostage said.

The Qaeda-linked militants, who were angry at French intervention in Mali, wanted to send a clear message: they could strike anywhere in the Sahara including terrorizing hundreds of foreigners from different backgrounds in Algeria.

“We saw the foreigners who were tied… we [Algerians] asked them that we wanted to leave, they [militants] told us to sit down a bit with them, maybe 1.5 hours till we are released.”

Al-Taher bin Shanab was leading the group who kidnapped the hostages.

According to the former captive, the group members called Shanab: “Emir Taha” or “Prince Taha;” a title commonly used by al-Qaeda members to denote to their superiors.

“This Emir Taha told us, we came here to die and to be martyrs, and that they wanted to talk to officials and generals that are ruling the country.”

According to freed captive, the militants were “happy” with their operation, as they held “13 foreigners hailing from different backgrounds such as Norway, U.S. and Britain. They were all tied with one suicide bomber watching them.”

Veteran commander from Niger

Meanwhile, according to Reuters, the field commander of the Islamist group that attacked the gas plant is a veteran fighter from Niger and was called Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, Mauritanian news agencies reported.

Nigeri is said to be close to the overall commander of the kidnappers, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria’s civil war of the 1990s who now has links with al Qaeda in the region.

Belmokhtar appears not to have been present during the raid, which led to the deaths of an unspecified number of hostages. More than 20 foreigners were still missing or being held captive in the industrial gas plant on Saturday.

Nigeri was reported to be holed up in the plant near the town of In Amenas and holding seven hostages, according to the Mauritanian reports carried by the SITE monitoring service.

Another of the group’s leaders, Abu al-Bara’a al-Jaza’iri, had been killed at the gas field’s residential complex, which has been retaken by the Algerian army, according to the ANI news agency.

Mauritanian news agencies have maintained contacts with Islamist groups in the region.

Nigeri joined the hardline Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in 2005 and participated in several of its “major” missions in Mali, Mauritania and Niger, including a June 2005 attack on a barracks in Mauritania where 17 soldiers were killed, the reports said....

That was their jihad. What's yours? "Algeria: 32 militants killed, with 23 hostages," by Paul Schlemm and Karim Kebir for the Associated Press, January 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) -- In a bloody finale, Algerian special forces stormed a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert on Saturday to end a standoff with Islamist extremists that left at least 23 hostages dead and killed all 32 militants involved, the Algerian government said.

With few details emerging from the remote site in eastern Algeria, it was unclear whether anyone was rescued in the final operation, but the number of hostages killed on Saturday - seven - was how many the militants had said that morning they still had. The government described the toll as provisional and some foreigners remained unaccounted for.

The siege at Ain Amenas transfixed the world after radical Islamists linked to al-Qaida stormed the complex, which contained hundreds of plant workers from all over the world, then held them hostage surrounded by the Algerian military and its attack helicopters for four tense days that were punctuated with gun battles and dramatic tales of escape.

Algeria's response to the crisis was typical of its history in confronting terrorists, favoring military action over negotiation, which caused an international outcry from countries worried about their citizens. Algerian military forces twice assaulted the two areas where the hostages were being held with minimal apparent mediation - first on Thursday, then on Saturday.

"To avoid a bloody turn of events in response to the extreme danger of the situation, the army's special forces launched an intervention with efficiency and professionalism to neutralize the terrorist groups that were first trying to flee with the hostages and then blow up the gas facilities," Algeria's Interior Ministry said in a statement about the standoff.

Immediately after the assault, French President Francois Hollande gave his backing to Algeria's tough tactics, saying they were "the most adapted response to the crisis."

"There could be no negotiations" with terrorists, the French media quoted him as saying in the central French city of Tulle.

Hollande said the hostages were "shamefully murdered" by their captors, and he linked the event to France's military operation against al-Qaida-backed rebels in neighboring Mali. "If there was any need to justify our action against terrorism, we would have here, again, an additional argument," he said.

President Barack Obama said in a statement Saturday that the U.S. stood ready to provide whatever assistance was needed in the wake of the attack.

"This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al-Qaida and other violent extremist groups in North Africa. In the coming days, we will remain in close touch with the Government of Algeria to gain a fuller understanding of what took place so that we can work together to prevent tragedies like this in the future," the statement said....

In the final assault, the remaining band of militants killed the hostages before 11 of them were in turn cut down by the special forces, Algeria's state news agency said. The military launched its Saturday assault to prevent a fire started by the extremists from engulfing the complex and blowing it up, the report added.

A total of 685 Algerian and 107 foreigner workers were freed over the course of the four-day standoff, the ministry statement said, adding that the group of militants that attacked the remote Saharan natural gas complex consisted of 32 men of various nationalities, including three Algerians and explosives experts.

The military also said it confiscated heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, missiles and grenades attached to suicide belts.

Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company running the Ain Amenas site along with BP and Norway's Statoil, said the entire refinery had been mined with explosives, and that the process of clearing it out is now under way.

Algeria has fought its own Islamist rebellion since the 1990s, elements of which later declared allegiance to al-Qaida and then set up new groups in the poorly patrolled wastes of the Sahara along the borders of Niger, Mali, Algeria and Libya, where they flourished.

The standoff has put the spotlight on these al-Qaida-linked groups that roam these remote areas, threatening vital infrastructure and energy interests. The militants initially said their operation was intended to stop a French attack on Islamist militants in neighboring Mali - though they later said it was two months in the planning, long before the French intervention.

The militants, who came from a Mali-based al-Qaida splinter group run by an Algerian, attacked the plant Wednesday morning. Armed with heavy machine guns and rocket launchers in four-wheel drive vehicles, they fell on a pair of buses taking foreign workers to the airport. The buses' military escort drove off the attackers in a blaze of gunfire that sent bullets zinging over the heads of crouching workers. A Briton and an Algerian - probably a security guard - were killed.

The militants then turned to the vast gas complex, divided between the workers' living quarters and the refinery itself, and seized hostages, the Algerian government said. The gas flowing to the site was cut off.

Saturday's government statement said the militants came across the border from "neighboring countries," while the militants said they came from Niger, hundreds of miles (kilometers) to the south.

On Thursday, Algerian helicopters kicked off the military's first assault on the complex by opening fire on a convoy carrying both kidnappers and their hostages to stop them from escaping, resulting in many deaths, according to witnesses.

The accounts of hostages who escaped the standoff showed they faced dangers from both the kidnappers and the military.

Ruben Andrada, 49, a Filipino civil engineer who works as one of the project management staff for the Japanese company JGC Corp., described how he and his colleagues were used as human shields by the kidnappers, which did little to deter the Algerian military....

President Barack Obama said in a statement Saturday that the U.S. stood ready to provide whatever assistance was needed in the wake of the attack.

"This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al-Qaida and other violent extremist groups in North Africa. In the coming days, we will remain in close touch with the Government of Algeria to gain a fuller understanding of what took place so that we can work together to prevent tragedies like this in the future," the statement said....

The attack by the Masked Brigade, founded by Algerian militant Moktar Belmoktar, had been in the works for two months, a member of the brigade told the ANI news outlet. He said militants targeted Algeria because they expected the country to support the international effort to root out extremists in neighboring Mali and it was carried out by a special commando unit, "Those Who Signed in Blood," tasked with attacking nations supporting intervention in Mali.

The kidnappers focused on the foreign workers, largely leaving alone the hundreds of Algerian workers who were briefly held hostage before being released or escaping....

That is, the focused on the non-Muslims, leaving the Muslims alone.

Chabane, an Algerian who worked in food services, said he bolted out the window and was hiding when he heard the militants speaking among themselves with Libyan, Egyptian and Tunisian accents. At one point, he said, they caught a Briton.

"They threatened him until he called out in English to his friends, telling them, `Come out, come out. They're not going to kill you. They're looking for the Americans,'" Chabane said.

"A few minutes later, they blew him away."

That's jihadi honor for you.

Hamas-linked CAIR is also working to free the "Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan," Aafia Siddiqui. What a coincidence that they'd have the same goal as these murderous jihadists.

"'Battalion of Blood' gunmen had one aim... to 'kill infidels and Christians': American and up to TWELVE Brits among hostages killed in botched raid on Al Qaeda gang at Algerian gas field," by Tim Shipman, David Williams and Beth Stebner for the Daily Mail, January 18 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Islamist militants are offering to free two American hostages held captive at an Algerian gas field in exchange for the release of two renowned terrorists jailed in the United States.

The attempt to negotiate comes after a US citizen and up to 12 Britons, who were kidnapped with dozens of other foreign oil workers on Wednesday, were killed in a botched rescue mission by Algerian forces.

As many as 60 foreign hostages remain unaccounted, as the bloody siege continues into its third day, though Algeria's news service said some could be hidden throughout the sprawling desert site.

Yesterday's air raid, which was carried out in Algerian helicopters and special forces without the prior knowledge of the US government, was meant to wipe out the al-Qaeda-linked militants and free the 132 foreigners from at least 10 countries who were being held, but instead left scores of people dead, injured or missing.

Militants said seven Americans had been taken hostage and it was reported that two of them escaped unharmed yesterday.

The Associated Press said today that kidnappers wanted to swap two American hostages still in captivity for two prominent terror figures in jail in the US, according to a Mauritanian website.

One of the two terrorists the captors want freed is Omar Abdel Rahman, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The other is a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

'The Blind Sheikh', as Abdel Rahman is often known, is currently serving a life sentence at the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina.

The offer, according to a Mauritanian news site that frequently broadcasts dispatches from groups linked to al-Qaida, came from Moktar Belmoktar, an extremist commander based in Mali who apparently masterminded the operation.

Five other Americans who had been at the vast Ain Amenas complex were able to avoid being taken captive when the terrorists first attacked early on Wednesday. Neither the Obama administration nor the British government was aware of the Algerian military's raid ahead of time.

Algeria's news service said special forces had resumed negotiations with militants today as foreign leaders scrambled to find out the fates of their citizens....

Instead of freeing the dozens of hostages, the raid resulted in bloody chaos at the isolated plant 800 miles south of the capital, Algiers, leaving the fate of many of the captives and the fighters uncertain. In launching its assault, Algeria also ignored offers of help from the SAS and American special forces.

'We asked them not to go in with all guns blazing and they just did it anyway,' said one London official. 'They insisted this was their sovereign territory and it was their operation.'

French sources said the decision to go in was taken because the terrorists were executing hostages. Last night, after a fierce day of fighting, Algerian officials said the rescue operation was over. They said Tahar Ben Cheneb, a prominent commander in the region, was among the dead militants.

The 11 bodies of gunmen found on Thursday comprised three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman and all were assumed to have been hostage-takers, a security source told Reuters. Algeria state news agency APS said the group had planned to take the hostages to Mali.

On Friday, the source said 18 militants had now been found dead.

A source said yesterday that 30 hostages were killed, of whom the nationalities of 15 had been established. Of these, eight were Algerian and seven were foreigners, including two British, two Japanese and a French national. One Briton was killed when the terrorists seized the gas compound on Wednesday. The number of foreigners unaccounted for and feared dead is now at 60....

The Obama administration appeared to be in the dark on Thursday about the hostage situation at the natural gas plant deep in the Sahara Desert. An administrative official told the Associated Press that the U.S. was not aware of the raid to free the hostages in advance....

Ahead of the raid, U.S. officials had been urging the Algerians to be cautious in their actions, but did not know a rescue mission was planned, said the administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Militants earlier said they were holding seven Americans, but the administration confirmed only that Americans were among those taken....

A local worker said from his home on Thursday that the Islamist gunmen of the ‘Battalion of Blood’ told the terrified staff that they would not harm Muslims but would kill 'Christians and infidels.'

Algerian security specialist Anis Rahmani told Reuters about 70 militants were involved from two groups, Belmokhtar's 'Those who sign in blood,' who travelled from Libya, and the lesser known 'Movement of the Islamic Youth in the South.'

Funny how these people who totally misunderstand Islam -- as Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. constantly insist -- always stress their Islamic identity.

'They were carrying heavy weapons including rifles used by the Libyan army during (Muammar) Gadaffi's rule,' he said. 'They also had rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns.'

Last night, as the military operation to rescue those captured continued, a local worker revealed how the militants appeared to have a clear strategy for their prisoners – some of whom even ended up having explosives strapped to their chest.

'The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels,' Abdelkader, 53, told the Mail from his home in the nearby town of In Amenas. '"We will kill them," they said.'

The U.S. government sent an unmanned surveillance drone to the BP-operated site, near the border with Libya and 800 miles (1,290 kilometers) from the Algerian capital, but it could do little more than watch Thursday's intervention. Algeria's army-dominated government, hardened by decades of fighting Islamist militants, shrugged aside foreign offers of help and drove ahead alone.

With the hostage drama entering its second day Thursday, Algerian security forces moved in, first with helicopter fire and then special forces, according to diplomats, a website close to the militants, and an Algerian security official. The government said it was forced to intervene because the militants were being stubborn and wanted to flee with the hostages.

The militants — led by a Mali-based al-Qaida offshoot known as the Masked Brigade — suffered losses in Thursday's military assault, but succeeded in garnering a global audience....

The hostage-taking raised questions about security for sites run by multinationals that are dotted across Africa's largest country. It also raised the prospect of similar attacks on other countries allied against the extremist warlords and drug traffickers who rule a vast patch of desert across several countries in northwest Africa. Even the heavy-handed Algerian response may not deter groups looking for martyrdom and attention.

Casualty figures in the Algerian standoff varied widely. The remote location is extremely hard to reach and was surrounded by Algerian security forces — who, like the militants, are inclined to advertise their successes and minimize their failures.

'An important number of hostages were freed and an important number of terrorists were eliminated, and we regret the few dead and wounded,' Algeria's communications minister, Mohand Said Oubelaid, told national media, adding that the 'terrorists are multinational,' coming from several different countries with the goal of 'destabilizing Algeria, embroiling it in the Mali conflict and damaging its natural gas infrastructure.'

The official news agency said four hostages were killed in Thursday's operation, two Britons and two Filipinos. Two others, a Briton and an Algerian, died Wednesday in an ambush on a bus ferrying foreign workers to an airport. Citing hospital officials, the APS news agency said six Algerians and seven foreigners were injured.

APS said some 600 local workers were safely freed in the raid — but many of those were reportedly released the day before by the militants themselves.

The militants, via a Mauritanian news website, claimed that 35 hostages and 15 militants died in the helicopter strafing. A spokesman for the Masked Brigade told the Nouakchott Information Agency in Mauritania that only seven hostages survived....

An unarmed American surveillance drone soared overhead as the Algerian forces closed in, U.S. officials said. The U.S. offered military assistance Wednesday to help rescue the hostages but the Algerian government refused, a U.S. official said in Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the offer....

The militant group believed to be holding the hostages has claimed that it carried out the attack in retaliation for the French military intervention against Al Qaeda-backed rebels in neighbouring Mali.

Jihadis always say they're retaliating for some Infidel provocation. This is partly to shift responsibility for their violence onto their victims, but also because, in the absence of a caliph, only defensive jihad is legitimate according to Islamic law. Thus all jihads have to be justified as defensive.

Will the Islamophobia never end? "Algeria Gunmen Tell Hostages 'We Only Kill Christians and Infidels,'" from Reuters, January 17 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Islamist gunmen who seized hundreds of gas plant workers in the Sahara told Algerian staff they would not harm Muslims but would kill Western hostages they called "Christians and infidels", a local man who escaped said on Thursday.

In a rare eyewitness account of Wednesday's dawn raid deep in the desert, a local man employed at the facility told Reuters the militants appeared to have good inside knowledge of the layout of the complex and used the language of radical Islam.

"The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels," Abdelkader, 53, said by telephone from his home in the nearby town of In Amenas. "We will kill them, they said."

His voice choking with emotion - "I'm a lucky man," he said over the sound of children playing and a television relaying the latest news - Abdelkader described how he managed to escape along with many of the hundreds of Algerians initially detained.

He asked that his family name be withheld.

"I am still choked, and stressed," he said, adding that he feared many of his foreign colleagues may have died. "The terrorists seemed to know the base very well," he said, "Moving around, showing that they knew where they were going."

The kidnappers said they were retaliating for last week's French offensive in neighbouring Mali, and demanded that Paris call off the operation and that Algeria withdraw cooperation.

Security experts said, however, that the raid appeared to have been planned well in advance - although the decision to launch it now may have been influenced by events in Mali....

Good thing Obama has assured us that al-Qaeda is on the ropes. Imagine what they'd be doing if they were strong. "Al Qaeda-linked group reportedly holding 7 Americans among 41 hostages after taking control of Algerian gas field," from FoxNews.com, January 16 (thanks to all who sent this in):

An Al Qaeda-linked group from Mali have attacked and taken control of a natural gas field partly owned by BP in southern Algeria, killing two and reportedly taking 41 people hostage, including seven Americans.

A group called the Katibat Moulathamine, or the Masked Brigade, called a Mauritanian news outlet to say one of its subsidiaries had carried out the operation on the Ain Amenas gas field, taking 41 hostages from nine or 10 different nationalities.

The U.S. embassy in Algiers said in a statement it wasn't "aware of any U.S. citizen casualties," but sources tell Fox News at least three Americans may be among the hostages.

The group's claim could not be independently substantiated and typically there would be fewer than 20 foreign staff members on site on a typical day, along with hundreds of Algerian employees.

The group said the attack was in revenge for Algeria's support of France's operation against Al Qaeda-linked Malian rebels groups far to the southeast.

The caller to the Nouakchott Information Agency, which often carries announcements from extremist groups, did not give any further details, except to say that the kidnapping was carried out by "Those Who Signed in Blood," a group created to attack the countries participating in the ongoing offensive in Mali....

Why we don't see more genuine Muslim reformers, part 6,381,291: "Algeria: Imam Escapes Assassination," from Magharebia, December 31 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

An Algerian imam who publicly denounced extremism escaped an assassination attempt on Sunday (December 30th), Tout sur l'Algerie reported. An unknown assailant reportedly stabbed the imam of the mosque in Mellakou, southwest of Tiaret.

In his Friday sermon, the victim reportedly condemned "salafist obscurantists". Sources said he later received a threatening phone call....

If "Islamophobia" is criminalized, will these attacks on infidels stop? No, of course not. The only thing that will stop will be the infidels' ability to speak about and resist the jihad onslaught.

"Algeria at UN: Limit free speech, protect Islam," by David Stringer for the Associated Press, September 30:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Algeria demanded new efforts Saturday to limit freedom of expression to prevent denigrating attacks on Islam, appealing to the United Nations to take a lead as nations engaged in new debate on the tensions between free speech and religious tolerance.

In an address to the General Assembly, Algeria's foreign minister Mourad Medelci called for global action under the auspices of the United Nations to respond to violent demonstrations provoked by a U.S.-produced video that mocks Muslims and the Prophet Muhammad.

While Medelci didn't offer precise details of how he believed the U.N. could intervene, his call follows similar demands at the General Assembly from scores of leaders in the Muslim world who want new laws to ban insults against Islam.

On the sidelines of the annual forum, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, told The Associated Press Saturday in an interview that the deaths of two dozen people in violent protests against the anti-Islam film underscored the need for new legislation.

Malaysia's foreign minister Anifah Aman told the General Assembly that the creators of the anti-Islam film — an amateurish, privately produced U.S. video that mocked Muhammad's image — and those behind the publication of lewd caricatures of the prophet by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo had shown "blatant malicious intent" toward Muslims.

"When we discriminate against gender, it is called sexism. When African Americans are criticized and vilified, it is called racism. When the same is done to the Jews, people call it Anti-Semitism. But why is it when Muslims are stigmatized and defamed, it is defended as 'freedom of expression'?" Aman told the General Assembly.

Aman he believed it was "time to dwell deeper into the heart of the problem and the real debate — the relationship between freedom of expression and social responsibilities, duties and obligations."

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari had called in his speech Tuesday to the General Assembly for action led by the U.N. to address a "widening rift" between the Muslim world and the West....

Speaking Saturday, Liechtenstein's Foreign Minister Aurelia Frick said that the "hateful slander of people on the basis of their culture or religion is unacceptable," but did not join calls for new laws. She urged nations instead to promote values of "tolerance, understanding and mutual respect."

Yes, that will fix everything.

And of course, it's the Algerians' fault: "The Algerian government must take complete responsibility for the consequences of its stubborness and the misguided and irresponsible decisions of its president and its generals."

"Mali Islamist group 'kills Algerian diplomat,'" from al-Jazeera, September 2 (thanks to David):

A armed religious movement that has taken control of large swathes of Mali has reportedly claimed to have executed an Algerian diplomat who was kidnapped during their takeover of northern Mali, according to a statement published by a Mauritanian news agency.

Taher Touati, the Algerian vice-consul "was executed this morning [Sunday] at dawn" read the statement from the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa [MUJAO] published by online news agency ANI, known for carrying reliable information on extremist groups in the region.

"The Algerian government must take complete responsibility for the consequences of its stubborness and the misguided and irresponsible decisions of its president and its generals," read the statement.

Al Jazeera has been unable to independently authenticate the origin of the statement.

The Algerian foreign ministry was investigating the opposition fighters' claim. As of Sunday afternoon, Touati's family told the Algerian daily newspaper El Watan that they did not yet have any confirmation.

MUJAO had on August 24 given an ultimatum to Algeria, threatening to kill the hostage after Algiers said that they rejected its demands for the release of prisoners affiliated with the movement in a hostage swap.

MUJAO has claimed the April 5 kidnapping of seven Algerian diplomats from a consulate in the town of Gao.

A video MUJAO released on August 26 showed one of the four remaining hostages pleading with the government to save his life.

The wife of one hostage called on MUJAO to free them in a statement published by the Algerian press on Sunday, saying they were only "innocent civil servants," and urged President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to work for their release.

Three of the hostages were freed in July.

Alessandra Giuffrida, an anthropologist at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London who specialises in the Tuareg of northern Mali, said that MUJAO "possibly" had links to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and had no links with the Tuareg movement.

"One has to be quite careful about identifying these groups using ethnic labels, particularly as we know that the majority of the Islamists who are fighting in northern Mali are not Malians," she told Al Jazeera....