Al-Qaeda's scathing letter to troublesome employee Mokhtar Belmokhtar reveals inner workings of terrorist group
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed Islamic terrorist, was taken to task by al-Qaeda for failing to submit his expenses, answer his phone and carry out a spectacular attack, weeks before the Algeria gas facility hostage crisis.
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Mokhtar Belmokhtar
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The letter was found in Timbuktu Photo: Will Wintercross for the Telegraph
5:08PM BST 29 May 2013
In an extraordinary 10-page letter that reads like an employee’s disciplinary hearing, the veteran Jihadist fighter was criticised by the Shura Council, the 14-man governing body of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in which they called him a “bleeding wound” among the then thriving Islamist factions in North Africa when he threatened to form a breakaway group.
“Your letter ... contained some amount of backbiting, name-calling and sneering,” they write. “We refrained from wading into this battle in the past out of a hope that the crooked could be straightened by the easiest and softest means. ... But the wound continued to bleed, and in fact increasingly bled, until your last letter arrived, ending any hope of staunching the wound and healing it.”
Referring to Belmokhtar by his nom de guerre, Abu Khaled, the letter, obtained by the Associated Press last year in Timbuktu when Islamist militants were driven out of the Malian town, said he had a long history as a trouble maker.
“Why do the successive emirs of the region only have difficulties with you? You in particular every time? Or are all of them wrong and brother Khaled is right?” it asked.
Read the translated letter here
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The letter reveals the rifts not only between Belmokhtar, nicknamed Marlboro Man for his cigarette-smuggling activities in the Sahara, and his superiors, but also the distance between the local chapter and al-Qaeda central.
The local leaders were infuriated that Belmokhtar was essentially going over their heads by declaring his loyalty to Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda “core” leadership.
It accused him of ignoring differences between the local interests and international campaign.
“The great obstacles between us and the central leadership are not unknown to you,” it said. “For example, since we vowed our allegiance, up until this very day, we have only gotten from our [leaders] just a few messages, from the two sheiks, bin Laden (God rest his soul) and Ayman (al-Zawahiri). All this, despite our multiple letters to them.”
The letter in Arabic
Al Qaeda Letter 2 (Arabic)
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They also mocked him when addressing Belmokhtar’s failure to extract a high enough price for a kidnapped Canadian diplomat.
Robbie Fowler and a colleague were exchanged for 700,000 euros (£600,000) by Belmokhtar in 2009, far below the nearly £2 million per hostage going rate that European governments paid.
“Rather than walking alongside us in the plan we outlined, he managed the case as he liked,” they wrote. “Here we must ask, who handled this important abduction poorly?
“Does it come from the unilateral behaviour along the lines of our brother Abu Abbas [another name for Belmokhtar], which produced a blatant inadequacy: Trading the weightiest case (Canadian diplomats!!) for the most meagre price (700,000 euros)!!”
In December, just weeks after receiving the letter, Belmokhtar declared in a recorded message that he was leaving AQIM to form his own group called “Those Who Sign in Blood”.
Weeks after that, Belmokhtar masterminded the In Amenas hostage crisis in which more than 600 people were taken hostage in Algeria and 37 people were killed, including US, French and British nationals. The attack began days after French warplanes began bombarding north Mali, which was controlled by Islamists.
Belmokhtar was wrongly reported killed after Chad claimed their forces had ambushed his group in March.
Last week, his group claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack at the site of a French-run uranium mine in Agadez, Niger that killed 19 people, including 18 soldiers.
Jean-Paul Rouiller, the director of the Geneva Centre for Training and Analysis of Terrorism, compared the pattern of attacks to a quarrel between a man and a woman in which each tries to have the last word.
“They accused him of not doing something,” he said. “His response is, 'I’ll show you what I can do.’”
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