NEFA Foundation: AQIM Denies Surrender of Commander Abou Tamim Amine
By Evan Kohlmann
The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new communiqué, dated February 3, denying reports of the surrender of Abou Tamim Amine (a.k.a. Ben Touati Ali). According to the statement, “following the… imprisonment of Brother Amine-the commander of the al-Ansar Brigade, may Allah protect him-last week while traveling en route to a jihadi mission, several news agencies mentioned the news, and they cited two stories. The first story, the accurate one, included the phrase 'the capture of.' But, the other false story is the one that certain media agencies, directed by the intelligence agencies, rushed to report-alleging that Brother Amine had surrendered to the apostates, and that he had served as their agent for a long while. From this, a bigger lie was extracted, built upon the first lie: namely, that our organization has been infiltrated from top down… Accordingly, we strongly deny the news of the surrender of Brother Amine, the commander of the al-Ansar Brigade (central zone)-may may Allah free him from his shackles-and we confirm that our brother was captured last week while in the midst of a jihadi mission. We ask Allah to ease his hardship, and allow us to liberate our prisoners from the Algerian Guantanamo.”
An English translation of the AQIM statement can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.
