A banned Algerian Islamic group with ties to the al-Qaeda network has rejected a government amnesty for Islamic militants in a statement on its website.
The Salafist Group for Call and Combat issued the statement in an internet posting on Friday, a day after Algerians voted overwhelmingly to approve a government peace plan.
”The group does not need any reconciliation and peace charter,” said the Islamic group, known by the French acronym GSPC. The statement was dated Tuesday but was posted on the site on Thursday. It was signed by the group’s ”emir”, Abu Musab Abdulwadood.
”It needs a charter of Islam — with God,” said the statement.
The Algerian government said on Friday that more than 97% of Algerians approved the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation in Thursday’s referendum.
The charter gives amnesty to a broad span of Islamic extremists, from fighters to those who provide logistical support. But the offer excludes Islamists who committed massacres, rapes or bomb attacks in public places.
Government officials said the results showed that Algerians want to move on from violence linked to an Islamic insurgency that erupted more than a decade ago and has left an estimated 150 000 people dead.
”We are not after power,” the GSPC statement said. ”We have not raised arms in the face of the country’s rulers to achieve political demands.”
”We have stood up to the tyrants in order to make Islam victorious,” it said, adding that the group’s members ”had carried arms for the sake of the religion”.
The GSPC, which split from another insurgent group, the Armed Islamic Group, in 1998, is the most-organised group among Algerian insurgents battling the state since 1992, when the military cancelled legislative elections that religious parties appeared set to win. — Sapa-AP