Gatluak Gai Killed

Update: SSLA rebels claim SPLA involved in Gatluak Gai’s murder

-* Update: South Sudan army (SPLA) deny involvement in Gatluak Gai’s killing

July 23, 2011 (JUBA) - A rebel leader in South Sudan’s Unity state was shot dead this morning in Koch county, only three days after he signed a peace deal with South Sudan army, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

Gatluak Gai (SMC)

Citizens and officials from the area toldSudan Tribune that Colonel Gatluak Gai was shot dead on Saturday morning along with some of his bodyguards after a group of people opened fire on him at Pakur where his forces have been temporarily assembled.

• Phillip Aguer, the SPLA spokesperson confirmed Gatluak’s death, accusing the latter’s deputy, Marko Chuol Ruei for allegedly opening killing the former rebel leader after disagreement within the rebel camp.

• "As you are aware, the government of Unity state entered into an agreement with Gatluak Gai and his forces leading to the signing of a peace agreement just three days ago.

• But two days later, differences began emerging within the rebel camps, whereby some soldiers led by Gatluak started disrespecting this peace deal," Aguer told Sudan Tribune by phone.

He added, "This morning, five senior commanders led by Marko Chuol Ruei went and tried to persuade their leader only for Gatluak’s loyal forces to fire at them. Immediately, there was exchange of fire between the two rebel camps and Gatluak plus three others were killed in the process."

Aguer, however, distanced the army’s involvement in the Saturday morning incident, saying the SPLA were assembled in one point simply waiting for the rebels, who days after the peace agreement, hinted on joining the southern army.

Col. Gatluak signed peace agreement this week with the SPLA which was facilitated by the Deputy Chief of General Staff, Lt. General Pieng Deng Majok, and was promised the rank of Lt. General in the SPLA.

Unity State government has been engaging in peace talks with Gai for the last six weeks. Gai defected from the SPLA and rebelled against South Sudan’s government after the announcement of election results in April last year.

Gai, is believed to have hoped to become a county commissioner - a position appointed by state governors - if independent candidate Angelina Teny beat the incumbent Taban Deng Gai to the gubernatorial seat in Bentiu.

After it was declared the Teny, the wife of South Sudan vice president Riek Machar, had lost Gai began a localised rebellion against the SPLA and the South Sudan government.

But a spokesman for the South Sudan Liberation Army (SSLA), another rebel group active in Unity state, contradicted Aguer’s account of what happened, explaining that the rebel leader was lured to the peace process and attacked by the SPLA.

"Gatluak Gai was killed by the SPLA ... He signed a peace agreement and was ambushed by the same forces he signed the agreement with," Bol Gatkouth told AFP by phone.

"It was a way of luring him in so that they could catch him," he added.

Other sources in Unity state revealed that Gatluak expressed suspicion in the peace agreement with the SPLA when he was referred to as Colonel instead of Lt. General over radio announcement in Bentiu after the agreement contrary to the deal that confirmed him as Lt. General, a move that might have prompted the incidence against him.

Salva Kiir the president of South Sudan took the opportunity on July 9, when the country became independent as part of a 2005 North-South peace deal, to repeat his offer of an amnesty to all rebel groups in Africa’s 54th country.

The Rest @ Sudan Tribune

Four AQIM Leaders

I came across this 2008 list:

SALAH GASMI

AKAs: Salah Abu Muhamad; Salah Abu Mohamed; Abou Mohamed Salah; Bounouadher
DOB: l3 April l97l
POB: Zeribet El Oued, Wilaya (province) of Biskra, Algeria
Mother’s name: Yamina Soltane
Father’s name: Abdelaziz

Gasmi is the head of AQIM's information committee and is responsible for developing statements, circulating claims of responsibility for terrorist activities, and creating videos for AQIM.

As AQIM's representative to the media, Gasmi issued AQIM's claim of responsibility for its kidnapping of the Austrian hostages. Gasmi is one of the principal figures negotiating with the Austrian government for the release of the hostages. He represents AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel's interests in the negotiations. Gasmi also directs AQIM's internet communications with al-Qa’ida senior leadership.

YAHIA DJOUADI
AKAs: Yahia Abu Amar; Yahia Abou Ammar; Abou Ala; Abu Ala; Abou Alam
DOB: 1 January 1967
POB: M’Hamid, Wilaya (province) of Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria
Mother’s name: Zohra Fares
Father’s name: Mohamed

Djouadi is based in northern Mali and serves as the leader of AQIM in Africa's Sahara-Sahel region (also known as the AQIM South Zone). He is responsible for managing AQIM members in the South Zone and was actively recruiting Mauritanians as of early 2008.

Djouadi provided financial and operational support to a Moroccan AQIM-affiliated extremist who planned to establish an AQIM support base in North Africa. Djouadi headed the AQIM military committee prior to his appointment as AQIM South Zone Emir.

AHMED DEGHDEGH
AKAs: Abd Al Illah; Abd El Illah; Abu Abdallah
DOB: 17 January 1967
POB: Anser, Wilaya (province) of Jijel, Algeria
Mother’s name: Zakia Chebira
Father’s name: Lakhdar

Deghdegh is AQIM's finance chief. Deghdegh has relayed AQIM messages in ongoing hostage negotiations; as AQIM's designated negotiator, Deghdegh communicated stipulations for the release of the hostages and issued ransom demands.

ABID HAMMADOU
AKAs: Abid Hamadu; Abou Abdellah; Abdelhamid Abu Zeid; Abdelhamid Abou Zeid; Youcef Adel; Abu Abdellah
DOB: 12 December 1965
POB: Touggourt, Wilaya (province) of Ouargla, Algeria
Mother’s name: Fatma Hammadou
Father’s name: Benabes

Hammadou is the deputy leader of AQIM's Tarek Ibn Zaid battalion and is based in northern Mali. In 2003, Hammadou participated in the kidnapping of 32 foreign tourists in Algeria by the GSPC, AQIM's predecessor organization. Hammadou was appointed by regional AQIM leader al-Para to lead the Tarek Ibn Zaid battalion, which carried out the kidnapping (El Para, AKA Saifi Ammari, was named an SDGT on December 5, 2003). Hammadou and other members of the battalion received part of the ransom paid to liberate the tourists and allegedly used the funds to purchase weapons. In June 2005, Hammadou led a unit of AQIM operatives in an attack on a Mauritanian military outpost that killed fifteen soldiers and wounded at least another fifteen. Hammadou established a camp for AQIM recruits in northern Mali that included training in combat techniques, making and defusing bombs, and guerilla tactics.Hammadou was involved in kidnapping the Austrian tourists for AQIM in February 2008.

The Rest @ Zimbo

More on the AQIM Aquisition of Libya Weapons

The uprising of Libyan rebels against Muammar al-Gaddafi’s rule has led to some unwanted consequences: Al Qaeda-linked militants across North Africa have been benefiting from the lack of control over the Libyan Army’s hardware depots. This will present challenges to regional security for years to come.

It was a Sunday just before mid-June in the desert of Northern Niger. A convoy of three Toyota 4x4s had just entered the sleepy desert town of Ourarene, about 80 kilometres north of Arlit, a regional uranium mining centre essentially run by the French company Areva. All three vehicles, containing only one driver each, came to a stop in the almost unbearable desert heat.

Map of the border region between Libya, Algeria and Niger - Google Earth/io magazine

Then the shooting started.

• Hidden at some distance, a patrol of Niger’s Presidential Guard opened fire at the Toyotas with heavy machine guns and automatic rifles.
• One of the vehicles immediately got hit, while the drivers grabbed their weapons and fired back.
• Soon, the men belonging to the undamaged cars jumped in, shifted into reverse gear, swerved around and made a full-throttle dash amidst the sound of rattling automatic gun fire, incoming bullets whizzing by and clouds of desert dust popping up, according to accounts assembled by French and local media, citing witnesses and security sources.
• One soldier was fatally wounded in the exchange, six others injured.
• The security forces on site quickly called for reinforcements from the regular army, the Presidential Guard and the Gendarmerie.
• Helicopters were launched from Arlit, and a small surveillance aircraft soon arrived in the airspace over Ourarene, scanning the surroundings for the two 4x4s that had escaped the initial attack.
• When soldiers approached the smoking wreck of the Toyota they had hit first, they found the driver shot dead. It did not take them long to discover hints at the identity of the dead man: He was a ‘Barbu’, or ‘bearded one’, a regional synonym for Islamists of Arab origin.
• In the back of the 4×4, the presidential guards found no less than 640 kilograms of military-grade ‘Semtex’ plastic explosives, neatly packed into 40 boxes of 16 kilograms each.
• Dozens of Czech-made detonators, several military uniforms, various documents and 90,000 US Dollars in cash were also stashed in the car. The explosives and the detonators were clearly labelled – ‘Libya’.

Semtex plastic explosives, of which more than half a ton was recently smuggled from Libya - Wikipedia/US Government

• It took the thin-stretched Nigerien authorities three more days, until 15 June, to locate the remaining two cars.
• One had been abandoned about 40 kilometres north of Agadez, with more than 80,000 inhabitants the largest city in Northern Niger.

• Abta Hamaidi Mohammed, a shadowy Nigerien weapons trafficker and former government adviser, surrendered to the authorities in Agadez.

  
  

  Sources close to the investigation claim that Mohammed was piloting one of the Toyotas, and that he was ‘guiding’ the convoy through the desert.

  The catch in Niger’s desert in June highlights some of the unwanted fallout that the Libyan uprising has had across North Africa. Not long after Libyan rebels took up protest banners and arms in February, Western and African security experts pointed to the uneasy ramifications the situation could have. As ragtag rebel forces drove the Libyan Army out of the country’s East, ammunition depots were abandoned by their guards and left to looters.

  A whole range of people took advantage of the security vacuum: Pro-Western rebels, bandits, and of course some Jihadis and their sympathisers, who have a traditionally strong support base in and around the ‘rebel capital’ Benghazi. This way, weapons ranging from heavy machine guns to anti-aircraft guns to ‘SAM-7’ portable anti-aircraft missile launchers have most likely found their way into the arsenal of ‘Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’ (AQIM).

  AQIM is the new name of the Algeria-based ‘Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat’ (GSPC, or ‘Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat’) which was re-branded as an Al Qaeda affiliate in early 2007. At the time, the GSPC had been under heavy pressure from authorities, its strength was dwindling. The move was intended to open up new sources of funding from pro-jihadi donors in the Gulf region and elsewhere, and to attract badly needed recruits.

  However, the re-branding was perceived as controversial amongst the group’s leadership and their rank and file. Despite the occasional attack in its homeland Algeria and some kidnappings of Westerners across the Sahara plains, AQIM basically remained stuck with their backs to the wall. Membership was going down to merely 300 by some accounts, as the group was struggling to get their hands on explosives and was in need of cash and weapons. That was until earlier this year; the Libyan uprising has unintentionally provided the Al Qaeda-linked extremists with a new perspective, putting yet more stress on the already shaky regional security situation.

  The discovery and disabling of the weapons convoy in Niger in mid-June again shows the collaboration with regional nomadic tribes that the GSPC and later AQIM have long relied on. The place where the three Toyotas were fired upon by Nigerien soldiers, Ourarene, lies deep within Touareg territory, situated well away from routes that are normally used by overland traffic. But the case also demonstrates that even such clandestine convoys are not immune from detection.

  In fact, as Nigerien security officials contend, ‘human intelligence’ about the convoy was picked up well before the vehicles actually entered Niger. According to a tip-off, two Toyotas packed with explosives and other weapons passed the city of Sebah in south-west Libya in early June. Instead of heading directly south to the border with Niger, the cars first drove west into Algeria. There, the 4x4s turned left towards the Hoggar, a region characterised by a bizarre rock landscape, scarcely inhabited by Touareg nomads.

  Sometime between 08 and 10 June, the two Toyotas crossed from Algeria into Niger, where they linked up with a third vehicle – most likely the one with weapons trafficker Abta Mohammed at the steering wheel. At this stage, the convoy was almost doomed. Phone calls made by the passengers were tapped and their movements tracked until the convoy was raided on 12 June in Ourarene.

  Despite the counterterrorism success in June, security services in the West look upon the newly energised weapons flows in North Africa with great concern. In the past few months, similar weapons convoys have been reported heading to Mali and even into Senegal. Untold amounts of explosives have entered the black market in the region since the advent of the ‘Libyan spring’. Not least, the potential terrorist threat against civilian and other aircraft by portable air defence weapons, not just in Africa, is rising again after decades of laborious counter-proliferation efforts. Whatever the outcome of the Libyan rebellion, regional security will remain affected by the unintended consequences for years to come.

by Malte Roschinski

The Rest @ at I-O- Magazine

Viktor Bout Case Moves Forward

A federal judge overseeing the case of a Russian businessman charged with conspiring to sell weapons to a South American terrorist group expressed skepticism Thursday about defense claims that he is the victim of malicious U.S. prosecution.

In motions to dismiss the case, lawyers for Russian air cargo magnate Viktor Bout claimed that American officials vindictively launched a 2008 sting operation against him in Thailand because the government was embarrassed by revelations that the U.S. had used Bout's planes to deliver military supplies for reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

In a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said she had trouble finding evidence that the government had acted with malice.

"Where's the proof he was selected for a vindictive motive?" the judge asked Bout's lawyers at one point.

After Bout's lead attorney, Albert Dayan, insisted federal officials had pushed the sting operation in order "to annihilate him, take him out of the picture," prosecutor Brendan McGuire dismissed that line of argument as "sensational claims."

Dayan asked Scheindlin to allow a future hearing that might produce testimony on the government's intentions, but the judge held off, saying she would rule on that and the remainder of Bout's dismissal motions later.

Scheindlin rejected several of Bout's dismissal motions earlier this month, ruling that the government's use of a sting operation was not "outrageous government conduct" and that there was adequate evidence showing Bout's intended arms sale may have been aimed at killing Americans.

Bout, 44, was arrested in March 2008 by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents and Thai police. The sting used undercover informants posing as leaders of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucianarios de Colombia, or FARC, a narcotics-selling revolutionary group designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization.

Prosecutors later indicted Bout on charges of conspiring to aid a terror group by offering to sell more than 700 surface-to-air missiles, 5,000 Russian-made assault rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, land mines and other military items to the informants. A federal affidavit alleged that Bout told the informants the munitions could be aimed at American pilots and would be delivered by Russian cargo aircraft and air-dropped by parachute. Bout was extradited from Thailand in November for trial in New York, now set for October.

For more than a decade before his arrest, Bout prospered as an air cargo specialist whose fleet of planes flew worldwide, and he has long insisted his companies transported legal goods.

U.N. Security Council investigative panels accused Bout of violating international weapons embargos in Angola, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo _ moves that led the U.S. to personally target Bout with financial sanctions in 2004 and his financial empire in 2005.

The Rest @ Taiwan News

Ahmed Hussein Mahamud Pleads Not Guilty in Minnesota Mujahadeen Case

A Somali-American accused of providing money and people to al-Shabab has pleaded not guilty to terror charges. Twenty-six-year-old Ahmed Hussein Mahamud entered the plea July 21 in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. He faces four counts, including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. Mahamud had recently moved from Minnesota to Ohio to get married. He's been ...

TheRest@Minnesota Lawyer

AQIM's Abdelhamid Abou Zeid Negotiating for release of Maria Sandra Mariani

Bamako: Italian hostage Maria Sandra Mariani, kidnapped by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in February, is shown alive in a video given to negotiators in Bamako.

The 53-year-old Mariani does not speak in the video, but is shown wearing a veil and pink robes, sitting on the sand with her hands crossed. Three guns are visible behind her, but the men holding them are concealed.

A source close to the mediation who was in possession of the video said it had been given to "mediators in a country neighbouring Mali", without divulging the date or place where it was filmed.

"Negotiations are on the right path for Mariani to be freed," he added, saying a ransom payment was at the centre of the talks.

In May, sources close to the case said a first video had been released, showing the hostage was safe and sound.

"It is the same person, but she doesn’t have the same clothes or posture in the two videos," said a Malian source who saw both videos.

Mariani was kidnapped in southeastern Algeria near the town of Djanet on February 02. On February 18 she said she was alive and in the hands of AQIM in a voice recording broadcast by Dubai-based television station Al-Arabiya.

Corroborating sources say she is being held by an AQIM unit led by Abou Zeid, a leader of the organisation renowned for his brutality.

He is held responsible for several kidnappings including Briton Edwyn Dyer who was executed in June 2009 and that of five French, a Madagascan and a Togolese kidnapped in northern Niger in September 2010.

Three of the latter, a French woman and the two Africans, were released in February while the other four remain in the hands of the north African al Qaeda branch.

The Rest @ Online News

Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame Provides Information About Al Shabaab

"Things have been quite hectic over here,” is the reason laid out by the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) for the delay in bringing out the sixth issue of its English-language magazine “Inspire.” The issue was released on the Web on July 19.

Hectic indeed it would be for the outfit, which not only sees a greater role for itself in Yemen, where it is based, but also in Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden. From a broader perspective, the tactic could be a part of the outfit’s strategy of energising its franchises with an objective of widening the area of conflict and hitting at its enemy, the US, in places where such attacks are the least expected.

AQAP, in the latest issue of “Inspire” describes Yemen as a country which “is falling apart.” As a result, the “work of the mujahidin is growing in bounds.”

Intelligence reports now available indicate that the chaos in Yemen is allowing the AQAP to pursue its goal of conflation of Jihadi zones unhindered.

In Somalia, the AQAP is aiding and prodding the terrorist outfit al-Shabaab to take up responsibilities beyond the Somalian territory. Al-Shabaab controls north and central parts of Somalia and a large portion of its capital Mogadishu and is trying to overthrow the UN-backed transitional government in the country.

The links of al-Shabaab with Al Qaeda was never in doubt. Following the May 2 death of Osama Bin Laden, al-Shabaab had welcomed the appointment of Ayman al-Zawahiri as the next chief of the organization and promised cooperation. But the latest revelations suggest that the links go much deeper and unless controlled, add to the lethality of al-Shabaab as a trans-national terrorist outfit.

Interrogation of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a nabbed al-Shabaab commander, en route from Yemen to Somalia, has provided vital information about the growing operational linkages between the AQAP and the al-Shabaab.

Contacts between Yemeni and Somali militants go back to a few years.

• Al-Shabaab bought weapons and explosives from Al Qaeda contacts in Yemen using money from piracy and kidnap-for-ransom schemes.
• This trade has intensified over the years to include not just weapons, but also terrorists crisscrossing over the Gulf of Aden and training with explosives in each other’s country.
• In return, the AQAP has asked the al-Shabaab to carry out attacks outside Africa.
• It even suggested a new name for al-Shabaab, “Al Qaeda in East Africa,” to reflect the future trans-national character of the Somalian outfit.
• It probably spurred al-Shabaab to carry out two suicide bombings -- at a rugby club and at an Ethiopian restaurant -- in Kampala, capital of Uganda in July 2010.

The attacks killed 74 people, including an American aid worker. Uganda along with Burundi has contributed 5000 troops to an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia. This, however, remains al-Shabaab’s only known attack outside Somalia. The group has resisted moves to change its name for the fear of diluting its support base within Somalia.

The information of the coming together of the two conflict zones -- Yemen and Somalia or the Arabian Peninsula and the East of Africa -- has been further supported by the information extracted out of the digital files from the Abbotabad den of Osama bin Laden.

It has been indicated that Nasir Wahayshi, an AQAP leader who previously operated as Bin Laden’s personal secretary, was assigned the role of establishing an operational link between the AQAP and al-Shabaab.

A former US official was quoted in the media saying that “Some of the thumb drives were smuggled out of Somalia and through Yemen before couriers hand-delivered them to Bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.”

The intensity of the linkages established and consequent augmentation in the ability of the al-Shabaab has been reiterated in subsequent statements by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recently said that Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen are “trying hard to kill us” and in Somalia “there is a growing cell and a growing connection to Al Qaeda that we are all concerned about.” This explains the US drone strikes in Yemen in May and in Somalia in June 2011.

Outsourcing terror is a tactic that has been adopted by the militant/insurgent outfits around the world.

• In India’s insurgency affected Northeast, the Naga insurgents encouraged similar franchises in neighbouring states. These outfits were armed and trained in return for a share from the extortion amount. The strategy widened the area of conflict and generated finances for the parent outfit.

The project of al-Shabaab’s full merger with the Al Qaeda will, however, be somewhat delayed as a result of the setbacks the outfit has received in the past few months. Since March this year, it has lost at least three top commanders including its Emir, Ibrahim al Afghani. While Afghani, with years of experience in the Afghan conflict is believed to have been killed in a 25 June drone strike in southern Somalia, al-Shabaab’s senior commander Fazul Abullah Mohammed was killed in a check point shootout on the outskirts of Mogadishu by the Somali forces on 8 June. Previously, on 19 March, Sheik Daud Ali Hasan, al-Shabaab’s “senior official” was killed by unidentified gunmen in the southern port of Kismayu.

However, al-Shabaab is still very active in Somalia and will be amenable to carry forward the AQAP’s game plan in future. The conflation of the Arabian Peninsula, considered as the most dangerous node in the Al Qaeda’s terror network and East Africa has the potential of posing enormous challenges to the US goal of putting down “the base.”

By BIBHU PRASAD ROUTRAY

The Rest @ Al Arabya