On Muslim Brother's journey from al-Qaeda to ISIS
The Criminal Court in the Casablanca region of Algeria sentenced on November 8 Muslim Brotherhood leader, Ahsan Zarrouqan, codenamed 'Abi Dahdah Jalib', to 20 years in prison.
The court also deprived Zarrouqan of
his political rights.
Zarrouqan was arrested at the end of
last year.
List of charges
The court convicted Zarrouqan of a
number of charges, including joining a terrorist group, possessing firearms without
a license, premeditated murder, and possessing explosives.
According to the reports of the
Ministry of the Interior, Zarrouqan hails from Bouira province in eastern
Algeria.
He began his terrorist activity in
1993, exactly when the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Salvation Front started
launching armed attacks against Algerian security forces and civilians.
Al-Qaeda
Zarrouqan joined the Salafist Group
for Preaching and Combat, a subsidiary of the Salvation Front, at the end of
the 1990s.
The group was created as a result of
escalating confrontations between the front and Algerian security forces during
that period.
The group then swore allegiance to al-Qaeda,
thus turning Zarrouqan into a prominent element of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb
region.
Zarrouqan was, however, among the
senior leaders who decided to defect from al-Qaeda in the late 1990s.
He said the intensifying siege
around Bouira by the Algerian army was among the reasons why he decided to
defect from al-Qaeda.
He told his interrogators that he
was instructed by the then-al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to
leave Algeria altogether.
Al-Zawahiri, he said, wanted him to
escape the tightening noose of the Algerian army.
ISIS
Zarrouqan pledged allegiance to ISIS
at the beginning of 2014.
He carried out a series of terrorist
attacks inside Algeria at orders from the command of this terrorist
organization.
He said the Muslim Brotherhood
wanted to sow the seeds of unrest throughout Algeria.
The group, he added, wanted to
incite Algerians to take up arms against police and the army.
