International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 47

Know What You Are Fighting
circumstances.”
Preparing the violence behind its pseudo-political actions, the FIS created
the Islamic Salvation Army, the leaders of which all declared their allegiance to
it. Thus, no matter how these groups later judged the FIS, some condemning it for
opportunism, other reproaching its “willingness to dialogue,” and still others rejecting
any connection with it, this filial link was established by the statements of the leaders
of this party. Even today, Abbassi Madani claims authority over these groups. 35
Proclaimed by the FIS leaders, this paternity was proven by the Salafist continuity
between Ali Benhadj and Abbassi Madani, and of the terrorist emirs Djamel Zitouni,
Antar Zouabri, and Hassan Hattab—even if, out of pride or for tactical reasons, the
latter sometimes denied this filiation.
Profiles of Assassins: The Leaders of Armed Groups
Present during the violent meetings that the legal FIS organized in the mosques,
these armed groups passed into action at the first occasion they could strike. The
evolutions of this criminal-terrorist nebula then depended on their recruitment and
the rivalries between emirs. As the notion of idjtihad was “liberated” by the fathers of
Algerian Salafism, including Soltani, Cherrati, and Belhadj, themselves disciples of
the hardcore Egyptian, Syrian, and Wahhabi Salafism, the notion of “jihad” spread to
the armed groups. The popularization of these sensitive concepts turned the emirs and
their troops, with little knowledge of religion, into “soldiers of Islam,” missionaries
invested with a divine mission to reestablish justice on earth. 36
Thus emerged the ignorant, habitual offenders, and notorious bandits, “bad
boys,” according to Ahmed Merrani, one of the founders of FIS. Their guerillas
gathered together deviants, 37 the lost enrolled by the FIS through threat of reprisals
or promising paradise and the absolution of their sins, and veterans of the war in
Afghanistan, old hands in criminal violence. To the regret of the FIS elite, these thugs
led the bloodiest terrorist groups and sometimes gave orders to somewhat educated
subjects that had rallied to terrorism. The logic of the “tarmac” 38 prevailed over the
strategy of the “intellectuals” of the FIS, whose original project was to have the thugs
supervised by educated leaders. The theocratic or technocratic elite lost control of a
35
During the Al Jazeera program mentioned above.
36
At the limits of the psychotic psychological process, this system is omnipresent among the terrorist
groups of the world, despite the differences in their slogans.
37
The word deviant is used here in the criminological sense and does not only include delinquents
who have crossed the threshold allowed by criminal law, it also concerns the malcontented masses
that are distinguished by their morally condemnable behavior but that cannot be considered to be
infractions.
38
Expression used by the terrorists to indicate the capability to pass into violent action with the goal
of proving the supremacy of criminal know-how. See on this topic, El Seif El Batta, the cutting
sword, a document produced by the successive emirs of the GIA, which appeared in issues 10, 11,
and 13 and their magazine El Djamaa.
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