All the wrong connections

By CATHERINE MASTERS

The name Ahmed Zaoui is linked to terrorist cells that have carried out bombings, beheadings and throat slitting from Algeria to France.

The name crops up in connection with Osama bin Laden's suspected Southeast Asian army, and a book published this year links the name indirectly to suspects in the assassination of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Ahmed Zaoui's terror activities appear to have begun in the bloody and brutal Algerian civil war, which began in the early 1990s and has claimed 100,000 lives.

The militant Muslim is listed in various internet articles as one of the leaders of the shadowy Armed Islamic Group (GIA), although a BBC report said he had denied being part of this organisation.

The GIA was formed in 1992 after the Algerian military refused to accept the results of the first free parliamentary elections, won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), and staged a coup.

While the West supported the military, political parties formed and split and extremists wreaked havoc.

The GIA is said to have carried out numerous assassinations, and not only of political figures.

Among their targets were journalists, intellectuals, a psychiatrist, a singer, priests, other Christians, foreigners and many more.

The 1995 issue of the Executive Intelligence Review said the trademark terror signatures of the organisation were throat-slitting and beheading. Mass attacks were usually carried out by bombing.

It listed Abou Houdhaifa Ahmed Essaoui as a leader, and said his alias was Ahmed Zaoui.

He went into exile after an Algerian court condemned him to death for supplying weapons from Europe to guerrillas in Algeria.

It appears Zaoui slipped out of Algeria in the early 1990s - he was reported to have been arrested in Belgium in 1995.

He was also reported to be not only the head of the GIA for Belgium but also for Europe.

Some reports say he fled from Algeria via Saudi Arabia to Belgium.

In 1995 a series of bombings in France, three at Metro rail stations, were attributed to the GIA, apparently in response to the arrests of militants.

That year Zaoui was given a four-year suspended sentence by a Belgian court.

In 1997, he slipped out of Belgium and into Switzerland, where he sought political asylum.

Switzerland deported him to the African state of Burkina Faso, allegedly because it was a safe country for him and because it had agreed to take him.

The Swiss Government is said to have paid for him and his family to live there.

A BBC report about his deportation from Switzerland said he was questioned in 1997 by a French magistrate in connection with alleged terrorist activity in France.

It said he admitted being a member of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front, but not the GIA.

A report from the North Africa Journal in 1999 said he met with representatives of Amnesty International and complained he and his family had been treated like "rubbish" and were "buried" in Burkina Faso.

He claimed it was not safe, that his life was in danger and that he could be a target of Algerian special forces.

The report also said he was one of Algeria's most dangerous Opposition figures and had opposed a truce agreed to in the late 1990s: "He prefers a continuation of the conflict."

Last year, he was linked to Osama bin Laden and activities in Southeast Asia, allegedly fronting a new group called FIDA, or Sacrifice, and was being investigated in Malaysia.

FIDA is linked to a coalition of Islamic groups the Asian Post reported as being investigated for links to the September 11 attacks on the United States.

A book, Who Killed Massoud? published in France in May this year, links Zaoui to a man called Tarek Maaroufi who is said to be a supporter of the GIA and who was suspected of helping to plan the bomb attacks in France.

The book says Maaroufi is in turn linked to a man involved in the death of warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud in Afghanistan.

"Names and addresses of GIA members in Europe are found in his address book. When he is arrested he is with Ahmed Zaoui, a member of the GIA."

* additional reporting: Neil Porten