December 14, 2001

The current Islamic radical violence in Algeria had its origins in thousands of Algerians who went to fight in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Some of those that returned from this later went back to Afghanistan when bin Laden set up his terrorist training camps. Thus trained, they returned to Algeria and set up bloody minded radical Islamic organizations. These radicals set up training camps in remote areas of Algeria and trained more terrorists. Some of these moved to Europe and North America, where many have since been arrested.