NO ONE sees a man on a bicycle, Michael Collins used to say.
That was Abu Mohamed's philosophy when he came to see us at the heavily guarded El Djazair Hotel, frequented by Europeans, Algerian government officials and intelligence officers. With his stylish clothes and clean shaven good, looks, you would have thought Abu Mohamed was on his way to a nightclub. None of the police men in the hotel lobby realised he was an Islamic revolutionary, intent on destroying their government.
Abu Mohamed is a member of the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS), the armed wing of the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). FIS officials in Europe had sent him to find us at the El Djazair.
During three meetings with The Irish Times, he talked about his enmity for France and about his own efforts to unite the AIS with the extremist Armed Islamic Group (GIA) - which is suspected in Wednesday's Paris underground bombing. In keeping with Algerian tradition, he came bearing gifts imported chocolate, a gaudy pop up card showing the Muslim holy shrine in Mecca and a glittering key chain with Khaled - the name of his emir or commanding officer - printed on it.
Although he had no previous knowledge of the Paris attack, the metro was a "legitimate target", Abu Mohamed said. "France is the cause of everything that's going on in Algeria. It helps the Algerian state. . . As for civilians. . . when they experience something like this they are going to avoid taking the metro. That will create a problem for the government. It's legitimate.
Abu Mohamed referred often to the rift within the GIA. The "real GIA", he said, has allied itself with the AIS. The "bad GIA" is, he claimed, infiltrated by Algerian military intelligence. In a series of three meetings set up by him in June, July and October in Chlef, 200 km west of Algiers, the "real GIA" and the AIS had agreed to work together.
Which GIA carried out the December 1994 hijacking of an Air France Airbus, during which several passengers were murdered? "I think it was the bad GIA," he said. "If they really wanted to hijack the plane, they should have planned it better, and they should have gone all the way. There were French people on that plane and they didn't kill them. They said they were going to blow up the plane, so why didn't they do it?"
He expressed total disdain for Algerian journalists. "There was a communique by the GIA saying that if a journalist can't tell the truth, he must stop working. If he doesn't stop, he must die. They have been warned."
Since it was impossible to tell the truth under government censorship, there was no excuse for working as a journalist in Algeria, he said.
The GIA is believed responsible for killing 69 Algerian journalists. The AIS has not yet decided whether to "execute" journalists, Abu Mohamed said. Then he tried to reassure us. "You are not in danger. The only foreigners in danger here are the ones who come to support the government, economically." A hundred and eighteen foreigners, including 19 priests and nuns, have been murdered in Algeria over the past three years.
Abu Mohamed said he disapproved of the killing of women and children who are related to policemen or soldiers. There are policemen's wives who have secretly worked for the Islamists," he said. "A woman came to me and denounced her husband and said he worked for military intelligence. The GIA killed him, the real GIA."
He said the Koran required that he and his comrades verify information before killing intelligence agents. "We don't kill just anybody," he said. "We would have to have real proof. We are not killers. Everyone must know that. We are just trying to protect Islam. Islam is the right path."
Why do the fundamentalists slash the throats of their victims? Abu Mohamed noted that the Koran talks about the severing of hands and feet, and the slashing of sheep's throats. "It is the best way to come closer to God, to kill a taghout (enemy of God)," he said.
He accused the government of carrying out the massacres of women and children attributed to Islamists. "If you have someone who is capable of killing five year old children, what do you do with him? Kill him with bullets? Bullets are precious to us - they are very expensive. Take a 9 mm Kalashnikov bullet - it's as if you are throwing it away. Anyone who tries to destroy Islam. . . is a devil. You can do anything to wipe out a devil."
Abu Mohamed admitted that government officials "are human beings like us". But, he said, "we are forced to keep killing them, because they don't follow Islam."
The son of a well to do but religious merchant family, Abu Mohamed extolled martyrdom. "The Koran says real martyrs' don't bleed very much," he said. "When they die, they smell of musk perfume. This is true - the security force have noticed that, sometimes our dead smell of musk. When a martyr dies, he is met in paradise by 72 beautiful women.
Abu Mohamed said Algerian security forces captured and tortured him, using electricity and other means in 1995. "There's a verse of the Koran I kept saying over and over: `God protect me, God protect me, God protect me.' I didn't tell them anything, because if you tell them something they will torture you more and more until you say something else, and so on until you die".
