Laredj Ameur

Laredj Ameur, aliases Ali and Salim Ouahrani, was born on January 15, 1980, in Mascara, Algeria. He was arrested in relation to his participation in a plan of terrorist attacks to be conducted in Europe devised by the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat and al-Qaeda. While Laredj was part of numerous and interlinked jihadist networks, for this particular operation he was part of the cell led by M’Sahel Mohamed, based in Milan. Part of that cell were also Ghayour Amine, Koutari Bouchaib, and Tarkhani Houcine.

When he was young Laredj immigrated illegally to France and established himself there, although he resided intermittently between France, Italy, and occasionally in Algeria.
His first criminal charges are related to his complicity in forging documents for the leader of the first cell he was connected to, that of Said al-Maghrebi, who was also the one who introduced Laredj to jihad during their time in Paris. Then, in 1999 he was filed in the records of the Carabinieri in Italy, and later the same year he was charged for having given false information to the authorities. In 2003 the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Bologna requested for him to be tracked down.

In April 2005 he was arrested in France during the investigation to dismantle the cell of Said al-Maghrebi, he was identified as lacking a fixed residence, although he had a residence permit for Italy.
It was always in 2005 that he was introduced by a common acquaintance to M’Sahel Mohamed. According to M’Sahel’s testimony, Laredj had also been responsible for high-level robberies in France, conducted with the help of Majrar.
In Algeria in the summer of that same year he re-established contacts with an old acquaintance called Majrar Anouar, an individual linked with al-Qaeda and the SGPC. Majrar had recently been pulled back from Syria by his leadership, who preferred to have him organise terrorist attacks in Europe rather than join active combat in Iraq since he lacked military experience. Majrar then involved Laredj in the plans for the attacks in Europe, since he also received paramilitary and explosive training in the SGPC training camps in Algeria.

In January 2006 Laredj had started pressuring M’Sahel Mohamed to come to Algier to discuss some business. They were careful in their wording through phone calls but it became clear that they were referring to terrorism-linked activities. When M’Sahel went to Morocco in February of 2006 he met both with Laredj Ameur and also with another a radical called Abdelghani Aouiouiche. The three discussed the plans for the attacks in Europe – which included attacks on the church of San Petronio in Bologna and in the metro of Milan (with the intent of influencing the Italian general elections scheduled for April), as well as attacks on the French intelligence headquarters, the mall of La Défense, and other attacks in Denmark – and also an attack at the US embassy in Rabat. A few days later Laredj and M’Sahel travelled to Algier to meet with the leadership of the SGPC and allegedly Abu Hamza, who was the link between this organisation and al-Qaeda, and who kept in contact with Laredj through e-mails. At this meeting, they further discussed the attack plans mentioned above and also organised the training of newly formed Moroccan jihadist cells in the SGPC camps in Algeria. There Laredj was tasked with the responsibility for preparing the explosives for the attacks since he had the know-how.

Coming back to Morocco they had an additional meeting with Abdelghani and Abdelfattah Hiddaoui, the head of the Salafi jihadist movement in the country. There they again discussed their plans, particularly for the attack on the US embassy in Rabat. Laredj also confessed to Abdelfattah that after he had lived in France for 7 years he came back to Algeria with the express purpose of training with the SGPC and facilitating the movement of Moroccan jihadi volunteers to the training camps.

These plans never came to fruition as Laredj was arrested on the 10th of March 2006 together with M’Sahel and other jihadists after Moroccan authorities decided to intervene, worried about the planned attack in Rabat. He was then sent back to Algeria and there detained. In 2009 Italian authorities issued an arrest warrant in his name and the other members of M’Sahel’s cell.