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Page added on January 24, 2013
In Amenas Hostage Crisis an ‘Inside Job’
Islamist commandos behind the spectacular hostage-taking at an Algerian gas field probably had help from someone inside the plant, Norway’s foreign minister said in a newspaper interview published Thursday.
“We have reports that the terrorists had people on the inside who laid the groundwork over time,” Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told the Verdens Gang. “They had for example pre-positioned equipment at the site.”
A foreign ministry spokeswoman confirmed Eide’s comments to AFP.
Citing other unidentified sources, VG said the Islamist militants had placed weapons inside the complex ahead of their Jan. 16 attack, when they took hundreds of people hostage until a raid by Algerian security forces brought a bloody end to the crisis Saturday.
At least 37 foreign hostages were killed, including Western and Asian nationals, according to a preliminary death toll, as well as one Algerian hostage. Several people are still missing and some bodies haven’t yet been identified.
The newspaper also cited hostage witness accounts as saying that the attackers knew exactly where to find the expatriate workers inside the vast complex.
An Algerian security official told AFP Wednesday that one of the assailants had been employed as a chauffeur at the site up until last year.
Five Norwegians remain unaccounted for. They are employees of the Norwegian oil group Statoil, which jointly operates the site with BP and state-run Algerian energy firm Sonatrach.
The Scandinavian country has sent a forensics team to try to find the Norwegians among the unidentified bodies.
4 Comments on "In Amenas Hostage Crisis an ‘Inside Job’"
DC on Thu, 24th Jan 2013 4:07 pm
RZ Lol!
Who cares. I dont give a damn about your precious oil plant. I hope more of them get blown up in the coming years. Then maybe you RZ whores will start to understand the people there dont like there wealth being siphoned literally, from under there feet, and a brutal dictatorship installed , armed and trained by the ‘west’ to insure things stay that way.
And I care even less there was ‘an inside man’. That is even less surprising. I guess RZ just assumes any locals working at the plant are so glad they have a job assisting BP drain there countries wealth and oppress them with a satrap gov’t beholden to corporate power, that they would never consider taking an opportunity to strike back…
GregT on Thu, 24th Jan 2013 4:27 pm
DC,
Well said!
This is nothing more than another front for the war on terror, oops my bad, the resource wars for oil. The wars that can never be won, and will never end. Until the oil is all gone.
DC on Thu, 24th Jan 2013 6:18 pm
Ty, its so…amerikan to typically assume that loyalty is simply a matter of a pay-cheque. IoW, if there working for you, they totally loyal to you and you alone. Well, in SOME cases, the amerikans may be justified in thinking this. IE Saudi Arabia. However amerikans without any further thought, assume if there on the payroll, they are automatically on the US’s ‘side’. They cant grasp the idea that people will take US funny money strictly so they can do damage from the inside. To the amerikan, the very idea that a US dollar cant buy un-questioning loyalty to corporate power, is not something that really computes with them very well.
BillT on Fri, 25th Jan 2013 1:47 am
DC, you are right on. This is only the beginning of the attacks on oil facilities in the Middle East. Loyalty goes to the highest bidder or to the religious/government leader of choice.
How many movies have you seen that show double agents in spying? It is everywhere, especially in sabotage.
To use a common assumed one, how many Japanese worked in American factories long enough to learn trade secrets they could send to Japan? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Who was paying them to do what? And they have been doing it for decades. Think about it.