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Algeria Designates Two Foreign-Based Political Groups as Terrorist

Security forces in Algiers. (AFP)
Security forces in Algiers. (AFP)
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Algeria Designates Two Foreign-Based Political Groups as Terrorist

Security forces in Algiers. (AFP)
Security forces in Algiers. (AFP)

Algeria on Tuesday designated the Kabylie separatist group (MAK) and religious movement Rachad as terrorist organizations, the presidency announced.

The country's High Security Council based its decision on “hostile and subversive acts” carried out by the two foreign-based groups in an attempt to “destabilize the country and damage its security,” it said in a statement.

In March, an Algiers court issued international arrest warrants for Rachad co-founder Mohamed Larbi Zitout, 57, a former Algerian diplomat living in Britain, and three activists accused of joining the organization.

The group stands accused of infiltrating and inciting violence within the ranks of the Hirak anti-government protest movement.

The banned Paris-based Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie was accused in April of planning attacks in Algeria, a charge it denies.

The Defense Ministry is “seriously deviated by publishing a statement accusing the Kabylie independence movement, without any evidence, of planning terrorist attacks,” the group stressed.

It was established in wake of the so-called “Amazigh Spring” in 2001. Algerian authorities accuse it of being a separatist movement and of being “racist” against Arabs.

On Tuesday, French police arrested MAK chief in exile Ferhat Mhenni in Paris on charges of money laundering. He was released later that day.

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Sources: Israel Planted Explosives in 5,000 Hezbollah's Pagers

A person is carried on a stretcher outside American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A person is carried on a stretcher outside American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
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Sources: Israel Planted Explosives in 5,000 Hezbollah's Pagers

A person is carried on a stretcher outside American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A person is carried on a stretcher outside American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Israel's Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.
The operation was an unprecedented Hezbollah security breach that saw thousands of pagers detonate across Lebanon, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000 others, including the group's fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut.
The Lebanese security source said the pagers were from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, but the company said in a statement it did not manufacture the devices. It said they were made by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand, but gave no more details.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.
Hezbollah said in a statement on Wednesday that "the resistance will continue today, like any other day, its operations to support Gaza, its people and its resistance which is a separate path from the harsh punishment that the criminal enemy (Israel) should await in response to Tuesday's massacre.”
The plot appears to have been many months in the making, several sources told Reuters.
The senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 beepers from Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country earlier this year.
Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the firm's brand, the name of which he could not immediately confirm. The company in a statement named BAC as the firm, but Hsu declined to comment on its location.
"The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it," Hsu told reporters at the company's offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.
The senior Lebanese security source identified a photograph of the model of the pager, an AP924, which like other pagers wirelessly receive and display text messages but cannot make telephone calls.
Gold Apollo said in a statement that the AR-924 model was produced and sold by BAC.
"We only provide brand trademark authorization and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product," the statement said.
Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking, two sources familiar with the group's operations told Reuters this year.
But the senior Lebanese source said the devices had been modified by Israel's spy service "at the production level."
"The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It's very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner," the source said.
The source said 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.
Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months.
Hsu said he did not know how the pagers could have been rigged to explode.

In February, Hezbollah drew up a war plan that aimed to address gaps in the group's intelligence infrastructure. Around 170 fighters had already been killed in targeted Israeli strikes on Lebanon, including one senior commander and a top Hamas official in Beirut.

In a televised speech on Feb. 13, the group's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah sternly warned supporters that their phones were more dangerous than Israeli spies, saying they should break, bury or lock them in an iron box.

Instead, the group opted to distribute pagers to Hezbollah members across the group's various branches - from fighters to medics working in its relief services.

The explosions maimed many Hezbollah members, according to footage from hospitals reviewed by Reuters. Wounded men had injuries of varying degrees to the face, missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the pagers were likely worn.
"We really got hit hard," said the senior Lebanese security source, who has direct knowledge of the group's probe into the explosions.