By Houari A. – The trial of the terrorist attack against the Tiguentourine gas site, in In Amenas, in the wilaya of Illizi, in 2013, opens on May 27 at the Dar El-Beïda court, in Algiers, indicates the Arabic-language newspaper Echorouk. The attack involved 33 terrorists and resulted in the deaths of 37 people, including foreigners.
Citing a judicial source, Le Soir d’Algérie revealed, in 2018, that the file of the terrorist case of hostage taking which occurred in 2013 in Tiguentourine “was split into two parts”. The first part concerns the accused in pre-trial detention, four in number, whose case was referred to the criminal court of first instance of Dar El-Beïda, in Algiers, and the other part concerns the accused who was on the run and whose case was still under investigation. One of the lawyers involved in this case added to our colleagues at Le Soir d’Algérie that this case was going to be scheduled during the next criminal sessions, without however specifying the date of its holding.
The accused are of Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, and Libyan nationality. The charges against the defendants are “membership of an armed terrorist group, hostage taking, intentional homicide with premeditation and ambush and damage to state property”. These are A. Derouiche, alias Abou Al-Bara, Keroumi Bouziane, known under the pseudonym Redouane, Laroussi Derbali and Bouhafs Djaâfar.
The Tiguentourine gas site employed 790 people, including 134 from 26 nationalities. During the intervention of the combined forces of the National People’s Army, 29 terrorists from the group that had attacked this gas complex were eliminated and three others were captured, according to an official report. The terrorist act was claimed by an armed group calling itself “The Signatories by Blood”, led at the time by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, known as Belaouar, who was reported to have been shot dead in Libya in a raid coordinated by French and American forces.
