Abou Salah speaks about the deviations of El Qaeda

In a letter addressed to the security services, Salaheddine Kassemi asked to speak on the phone with Samir Saïoud and Abou Baçir

• According to credible sources, the spokesman for the ‘El Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb,’ Mohamed Abou Salah, whose real name is Salaheddine Kassemi reportedly sent in the end of April, a handwritten letter in ten pages to security services, through a former head of the ‘Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat’ who had left the armed activities without cutting his relationships with him.
  
  According to Ennahar’s sources, Abou Salah, in his letter to the security services has said that he hoped the President of the Republic Abdelaziz Bouteflika decreed new laws that would help the young armed men to return home and put an end to fitna in Algeria.
  
  Salaheddine said in his letter that he had refused throughout the period to refute or deny his contacts despite the insistence of some brothers. The Information Committee of the organization ‘El Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb’ has issued five bulletins in which Abou Salah had denied in any of these his contacts and this, despite the trouble caused by leaking information about his contacts with the authorities.
  
  In his letter, the spokesman of the armed organisation, Abou Salah said that his appeal with an intermediate of his relatives during the visit of Bouteflika in the Department of Biskra was because of the impossibility to make direct contacts with the authorities, but also because of the difficult situation in addition to his fears. He added that “after two days, a brother in whom I trust told me he wanted to talk to me. I immediately understood his message.”
  
  Abou Salah, considered one of the closest to the national emir of the terrorist organization, Abdelmalek Droukdal, asked in his letter that the army forces prepare a military operation in a site he will shortly indicate, so that he would be able to meet the security services and to surrender on the territory of a Department in the fifth military region, which he refuses to reveal the name for security reasons.
  
  Abou Salah said he expected a response to his request and also guaranties that he had first expressed in his first letter. He had asked the authorities to allow him to talk on the phone with former leaders of the organization to know about their situations, like Samir Saïoud, alias ' Mosaâb Abou Abdallah', former coordinator of the organization ‘El Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb’, who was arrested in June 2007 and ‘Abdelfettah Abou Baçir', emir of a Saryate of the capital, who was also arrested in Ramadan of the same year.
  
  According to Ennahar’s sources, Abou Salah’s letter of ten pages describes in detail the reasons which had driven him to join the armed groups. He also recounts the deviations made by the Salafist group, with the advent of ‘Abou Mosaâb Abdelouadoud’ at the head the armed organisation. The latter said that Abou Mosaâb was the weakest element of the group and that people who run are those that surround him.
  
  Ennahar had in an earlier edition published information about the first contact of Abou Salah, through his family, with the authorities. Members of his family in Biskra, got in touch then with a senior from the security services that accompanied the President in his visit in the Department of Biskra, in early March, asking him to intervene with the security services in order to provide the necessary guarantees for Salah Kassemi who had expressed his desire to leave the armed activity and finally go home without prosecution.
  
  The letter of Abou Salah comes at a time when this latter has very tense relations with Droukdal, especially after heard about his replacement at the head of the information Commission by Deghdegh Ahmed, from the region of El Ancer in Jijel and who was his companion.
  
  Ennahar / Dalila B.