Algiers bomber's family blames "ignorance": paper
Sat Dec 15, 2007 8:29am EST
ALGIERS (Reuters) - The family of a suicide bomber who
killed 17 U.N. staff in Algiers this week said he
joined Islamist rebels after failing to get a taxi
license and was motivated by "ignorance, not poverty",
a newspaper reported.
"We got nothing from al Qaeda, we are still very
poor," Bechla Rabah's oldest son Younes told Echorouk.
"Ignorance, not poverty, this is what pushed my father
to blow himself up."
Al Qaeda's North African wing claimed responsibility
for twin car bombs on Tuesday that killed more than 30
people at the U.N. offices and a court building,
saying it had targeted "the slaves of America and
France".
It was the deadliest assault in Algiers in years and
followed a string of similar bombings after Islamist
rebels in the country adopted the al Qaeda name at the
start of the year.
Algerian newspapers said Rabah's days were numbered as
he was in a final stages of cancer. They said two of
his sons were members of the Islamic Armed Group also
known by its French initials GIA and were killed by
security forces in the 1990s.
Rabah's 82-year-old mother told Echorouk she heard of
his death from the newspapers and had not seen her son
in more than a decade. Rabah, who was 63, joined
Islamist rebels in 1995.
"The police came to do a DNA analysis. They told me
the results will be ready by Saturday. I continue to
believe my son is innocent. I need strong evidence to
change my mind," she told the national daily in an
interview at the family's home in Heraoua, a poor
village 20 km (12 miles) east of Algiers.
"He wanted to work as a taxi driver," said Rabah's
daughter Asia. "But he did not get the go-ahead from
the administration. That's why he decided to join the
FIS in the 1990s."
"I could have been one of the victims," she added.
Algeria plunged into violence in 1992 after the then
military-backed government scrapped legislative
elections which the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a
radical Islamic party, was poised to win.
The violence had subsided since the 1990s but in the
past twelve months has regained some of its former
intensity.
Algerian officials say poverty does not produce
terrorism, but local commentators often point to a
bleak social background of poverty and unemployment to
explain the rebels' ability to recruit suicide
bombers.
(Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
---------------
Jusfiq Hadjar gelar Sutan Maradjo Lelo
Allah yang disembah orang Islam tipikal dan yang digambarkan oleh al-Mushaf itu
dungu, buas, kejam, keji, ganas, zalim lagi biadab hanyalah Allah fiktif.
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