Islamist assassination group recruits members from the intellectual milieu it attacks

TEN days after the Algerian trade union leader Abdelhak Benhamouda was gunned down in Algiers with two of his bodyguards a little known group of intellectual Algerian fundamentalists claimed responsibility for his murder in the Enlightenment, a newsletter published in London by Algerians close to the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).

Algerian security services said the claim on behalf of the Islamic Front for Armed Djihad (FIDA) was genuine.

In its statement, the FIDA gloated triumphantly: "The Mujahideen in the cause of Allah in Algeria executed a brilliant military operation against a notorious enemy of Islam and Muslims - the late Abdelhaq Benhamouda. The efficiency and professionalism of the operation has startled the enemy. Fear has taken possession of their feelings. The junta generals and their acolytes were sobbing during Benhamouda's burial."

Twice in 1996, Algerian authorities announced that the FIDA, a small group which specialises in the assassination of "infidel" intellectuals, journalists and politicians, had been decimated.

Among others, the group is believed to have murdered the international award-winning writer Tahar Djaout, the psychiatrist Mahfoud Boucebci, television journalist Smail Yefsah and former interior minister Mohammed Harbi.

The FIDA's members are drawn from the very intellectual milieu it attacks. They live in comfortable villas and several are known to have been university professors - usually scientists. Some were elected to the Algerian parliament on the Islamist FIS ticket in December 1991, before the election was cancelled by the army.

At 3 a.m. on February 13th, Algerian security forces attacked an apartment near the trade union headquarters where Benhamouda was shot. They killed eight people, including two women and two children. The government claimed that Benhamouda's killers were among the dead.

The FIDA, like other armed Islamist groups, is organised in small cells of scarcely 10 members. This one was called the Supporters of the Sunna (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) of the FIDA. They had carefully planned Benhamoud's assassination, renting the flat six months earlier and observing their prey through binoculars.

The two women killed by the security forces, Karima Zoubir and Razika Bouderbala, were the widows of dead Islamist rebels and had allegedly joined the group with their children to provide cover for them.

Security forces have not been able to identify the new leader of the FIDA, although a man named Abdel-Hakim is rumoured to be an influential "emir" or commander in Algiers.

The last known leader, Mohammed Brahimi, was nick-named "Lunettes" because of his professorial eyeglasses. He was killed in, a police raid in May 1996. The authorities were surprised to that the FIDA ran an operation, cataloguing government appointments from official announcements in newspapers.

No matter how many times the Algerian government kills leader of Islamist rebel groups, new - and usually more radical - leaders take their place. It may be a sign of desperation that the impoverished government is now offering up to £52,000 reward for information leading to "the arrest or elimination of terrorist chiefs".