Ottawa had hoped to try terrorist killed by U.S.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar kidnapped a Canadian diplomat in 2008
TORONTO — Canada’s plan was to bring Mokhtar Belmokhtar to trial.
After the terrorist commander orchestrated the 2008 kidnapping of Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler in Niger, Ottawa wanted to put him in a courtroom to answer for ransoming one of its citizens to “benefit … a terrorist group,” according to the Department of Justice’s Interpol warrant.
Algeria had already sentenced Belmokhtar to death in absentia. Among other crimes, he spent almost a generation staging a campaign of “massacres,” “murder” and “aggravated theft” from the North African desert, according to Algerian authorities.
After the 2013 attack Belmokhtar staged on an Algerian gas plant, the United States issued a $5-million reward to bring him “to justice.” Behind the scenes, though, the U.S. was fine with seeing the elusive one-eyed terrorist killed. And this week, Pentagon officials announced they got their wish.
On Saturday, F-15s streaking over the Libyan Desert sent bombs smashing into a reported al-Qaida position where Belmokhtar was thought to be hiding.
“The Libyan government in the east of Libya confirms that the U.S fighter jets conducted air strikes last night in a mission which resulted in the death of the terrorist Belmokhtar,” the recognized government of Libya said in a statement Monday.
It’s not the first time the elusive 43-year-old has been reported killed, though. In 2013, the Chadian military boasted it had destroyed a terrorist base, amassing a toll of “several dead terrorists, including their leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar.”
Only months later, Belmokhtar popped up to claim responsibility for a fresh wave of attacks. Born in 1972 in eastern Algeria, Belmokhtar, like so many other Islamic terrorists, was radicalized by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
He trained with jihadist groups in Afghanistan starting in the late 1980s before returning to Algeria to participate in the Algerian Civil War in the early 1990s, where he lost an eye.
In the two decades since, Belmokhtar continued to operate out of the Sahara desert, orchestrating hostagetakings and smuggling illegal cigarettes, earning as much $50 million in the process, which he used to build a private jihadist army.
His expertise at smuggling tobacco earned him the name “Mr. Marlboro,” U.S. authorities have noted.
Fowler was kidnapped by Belmokhtar’s men in Northern Niger in 2008.
“Despite the voluminous robes, he was relatively slight, with a heavily weathered, deeply lined face and curly black hair,” the diplomat wrote later of his encounter with the terrorist leader.
“His most distinguishing feature was a deep, almost vertical scar that began above the middle of his right eyebrow, crossed his right eyelid, and continued across his right cheek, disappearing into his moustache.”
In contrast to the ideology espoused by Fowler’s younger captors, Belmokhtar was “professional” and “businesslike,” and always travelled in a convoy of Toyota off-road vehicles.
Fowler was released in April 2009. In his book, A Season in Hell, he said he had no knowledge of the terms that had led to his release.
However, according to letters uncovered by journalist Rukmini Callimachi in Timbuktu, Mali, the freedom of Fowler and his colleague Louis Guay was purchased with a $1-million payout.
The sum enraged Belmokhtar’s al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb bosses, according to the correspondence dug up by Callimachi. They believed the Algerian could have got as much as $3 million for Fowler if only he had been smarter.
This, along with Belmokhtar’s refusal to file al-Qaida expense reports or answer his phone, eventually contributed to him leaving the terror organization to form a breakaway group known as the Signed-in-Blood Battalion.
In the group’s most notorious attack in 2013, members took expatriate workers hostage at a BP-operated gas plant in Algeria. Thirty-nine of the hostages died during a military assault on the site.
Among the dead were two radicalized Canadians from London, Ont. Xris Katsiroubas and Ali Medlej had slipped in to North Africa to join Belmokhtar in 2011.