AQIM Mujahadine Convicted in Algeria

ALGIERS - The leader of Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) Abdelmalek Droukdel was Friday sentenced in absentia to death and 48 co-defendants for their involvement in an attack that had caused eleven dead and over 100 injured on April 2007 in Algiers, according to APS.

Besides Droukdel (already condemned to death in the past), Algiers criminal court has pronounced death sentences against

• Salah Gacemi Salah : leader of the "communication cell of Al Qaeda in Algeria"
• Rabah Ghiatou, emir of the section El Arkam who performed the operation against the buildings of the police in Dar El Beida, a district of Algiers, the agency said.
• Four defendants present in court, were sentenced for their part to life imprisonment, another to 4 years in prison and two were acquitted.

The 56 defendants were prosecuted for setting up a terrorist group, membership and joining armed terrorist group, murder with premeditation and use of explosives.

All those who testified denied the facts back on confessions they had expressed before the security forces and the judge. They were also then recognized to belong to a section based in the region of Thénia, near Boumerdes (50 km east of Algiers) of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which was transformed in late 2007 into AQMI and allegiance to the organization of Osama bin Laden.

Abdelmalek Droukdel, alias Abu Moussaab Abdelouadoud, 38, is still at large after having joined terrorism in the 90s. He has escaped several arrests and has been repeatedly condemned in absentia to death for deadly bombings claimed by AQIM. The death penalty is not applied in Algeria under a moratorium adopted in 1993.

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