Amari  Saifi

Amari  Saifi also known as Abdelrazzak "le Para" (in French “The paratrooper”) served in a Paratroop regiment of the Algerian Army in the late 80s’ along with his future commander Hassan Hattab, when both left the Algerian militant group GIA and formed their own radical group in 1998 – the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat – GSPC.

Hassan Hattab was replaced as the GSPC leader in 2003 by the more extreme leader Nabil Sahrawi. Iit seemed that Amari  Saifi took an independent direction. Amari  Saifi built a strong support network in the region of the Sothern Sahara on the borders with Black Africa, American military officials said, marrying the 14-year-old daughter of a Mauritanian tribal sheik and buying loyalty from local officials in Mali.

In summer 2003 his group kidnapped a group of about 32 tourists, most of them Germans, in the South-East Sahara, not fare from the borders with Libya and Chad.  All but one of the hostages, a German woman who died of heat stroke, were freed after few weeks. Germany is reported to have paid a ransom for the hostages, but the German government has refused to confirm or deny this.

The kidnapping of the tourists made Amari  Saifi an international known terrorist who was hunted by German, French, Algerian and Libyan authorities. 

Amari  Saifi found refuge among “The Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad (MDJC)”.  On 05/13/2004 Brahim Tchouma, the MDJC’s representative for external affairs, hinted, during an interview in Paris, that the group was ready to hand Amari  Saifi over for the right price.  In 07/2004 two of Amari  Saifi’s supporters were killed, in unclear circumstances, by Libyan border patrol.   

On 12/12/2004 the Boston Glob newspaper published that a company of 150 soldiers from Niger has brought the war on terrorism to a new frontier, carrying out a three-week hunt for armed bandits linked to an Algerian terror group in the inhospitable terrain of the Sahara desert and the Sahel region, referring to the hunt after Amari  Saifi.

The raid was probably carried out in 10/2004 and, according to some intelligence sources, Amari  Saifi was captured and extradited to Libya.

On 06/25/2005 Amari  Saifi was sentenced in absentia, in Algiers, Algeria’s capital, along with two other Algerians, for life imprisonment. 

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18/10/2008 07:21:23