I remember the cold wind whipping our faces and laying down the grass that the cows grazed as if nothing had happened. Eagles which hovered above our heads to better taunt the depths of the valley where the village of Aït-Ouabane nestles, in the heart of the Djurdjura national park, in Kabylia. And above all, from this belvedere where Hervé Gourdel had left a mark, like a landmark on the wall.
As the trial of the assassination of the French high mountain guide opens in Algiers this Thursday, in September 2014, the smallest details of the drama come to mind.
“I beg you, Mr. President”
It all started on September 21. That day, we learned that a 55-year-old man from Nice, married and father of two children, who had come to do a ten-day trek in Kabylia – he had not been to Algeria since 1989 – had been kidnapped by a group of jihadists. The next day, in a video in which the hostage appeared, in yellow and blue sweatshirts, between two men with faces hidden by their cheches and armed with Kalashnikovs, this group, called The Soldiers of the Caliphate (Jund al-Khilafa) and claiming to be of the Islamic State (IS) group, posed an ultimatum to François Hollande, then President of the Republic, described as a “dog”: he had to end France’s participation in the strikes against ISIS in Iraq under penalty, in a 24 hours, to see his national “slaughtered”. “I beg you, Mr. President, to do everything in your power to get me out of this mess,” Hervé Gourdel said at the time.
In another video released on Wednesday 24, the guide will be heard again. “Françoise, Anouk, Erwan, my parents, I love you. His last words. His captors, in Afghan clothes, beheaded him before our horrified eyes, in the light of what was interpreted as a sunrise.
At that time, from Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seduced even the jihadists of the Algerian maquis, disappointed by the inertia of the emir of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqmi), Abdelmalek Droukdel, who rallied to its organization.
There was this disturbing video, shot in an impenetrable mantle of cedars and firs, where we saw about thirty Algerian jihadists, some with their faces uncovered, armed, congratulating themselves on their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. However, despite a spectacular start, ISIS ultimately failed to make Algeria the “wilaya” (province) on which it was counting to extend its influence.
The one that the Algerian intelligence services consider to be the mastermind of the operation, Abdelmalek Gouri, will fall into an ambush by the army in December 2014 and will be shot within 100 kilometers of Algiers. It must be said that, since the assassination of Hervé Gourdel, the sweeps of the soldiers have not stopped – the army had set up a camp on an abandoned stadium -, pushing the terrorists to leave their maquis to join others. safer places. According to the Algerian authorities, they were all killed.
The border between “two worlds”
There remains, however, a suspect, justly called to appear this Thursday in Algiers: Abdelmalek Hamzaouin, presumed member of the Soldiers of the caliphate, indicted for “kidnapping, torture and murder with premeditation”, as well as for “creation and organization of an armed terrorist group. “. Captured and questioned by the army, it was he who led the soldiers and the gendarmes to the body of Hervé Gourdel.
I also remember this Thursday, January 15. Near a river separating the villages of Takhlidjt and Tiferdoud, in the middle of fruit trees, about thirty kilometers from the place of his abduction, the remains of the French guide had been found after almost four months of research.
Today will also be called to appear the five companions of Hervé Gourdel, who is accused of not having warned the authorities that they were hosting a foreigner and of having delayed in informing of his kidnapping.
The days which had followed the kidnapping, the regulars of mountain sports who know the region were astonished that the guides “took such a risk”. And that beyond the forest path along the forest to the sadly named “cave of the Maccabee”, it is common knowledge that the area is no longer secure and that the last military barracks, at the Assoupli belvedere, marks a sort of border, “between two worlds”, a municipal guard once told me.
At the time, their accounts made them rather unconscious mountaineers and amateur hikers. Contacted Hervé Gourdel via Facebook, they had organized his visit, providing the authorization to obtain the visa and accommodation, so that the guide could enter Algeria and be welcomed as best as possible. “We then went shopping for our excursion and we took the road straight to the chalet,” one of the guides testified in the Algerian press in 2014. The group had planned to spend two days defining the hiking perimeter, two other days of walking, two more to discover the caves of the region, very famous. And then the rain had disrupted their plans. After stopping near the village of Aït-Ouabane, they would have started the ascent of Mount Lalla Khedidja, the highest peak of Djurdjura, at 2,308 meters above sea level
An area under high surveillance
Impressed by the massifs of North Africa, accustomed to organizing courses in the Moroccan Atlas for twenty years, the high mountain guide and his companions would then have returned by cross roads to the national road. At the Tizi n’Kouilal pass, they would have gone into the forest of Aït-Ouabane to look for spring water. It was then that their path would have crossed that of the jihadists.
“We found ourselves surrounded by terrorists without knowing where they came from,” testified another attendant. “They introduced themselves as the Soldiers of the Caliphate and said they pledged their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. We hung on with them, we begged them to let Hervé go, in vain. He had his gaze lost, he did not understand what was going on. ”
A year later, on this belvedere where with a film crew, we were in the process of reconstructing its route, the inhabitants of Tikjda, a former ski resort housing the chalet of Hervé Gourdel, ensured that “the paths were completely secure” and that “the tourists had returned”. A permanent security post was being built near a mountain path regularly blocked by snow once winter set in. I also remember the armed soldiers equipped with binoculars still monitoring the perimeter. Less enthusiastic, a patriot (name given to armed civilians to fight against terrorists in the 1990s) suggested that “in this great forest, too big and too dense”, it was difficult to know if “all the terrorists had been killed. “.
Shock and awe
Since then, water has flowed again on the winding paths where Hervé Gourdel had ventured. In six years, the groups claiming to be ISIS and AQIM have been decimated by the army or forced to withdraw to Tunisia or Mali. The death of Abdelmalek Droukdel during an operation by Barkhane forces in northern Mali in early June last year undoubtedly marks the end of an era for the Al-Qaeda affiliate, now taken over by Abou Obeida Youssef al-Annabi, one of the last veterans of armed Islamism of the 1990s. According to Algerian security sources, there are only some 300 men in the Algerian maquis at most, broken up into small groups and very isolated.
However, for me, the shock and the awe have not dissipated with time and the alternately sunny and snowy shots of the majestic Djurdjura that Algerian hikers share on social networks invariably bring me back to this September 24.
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
