Between February 19 and early April 2003, seven independently mobile parties of European tourists in 4WDs and on motorcycles, including 16 Germans, 10 Austrians, 4 Swiss, a Dutchman and a Swede, went missing in the UNESCO-listed Tassili N'Ajjer region of southeast Algeria, most while travelling along the popular 470-km 'Graveyard Piste' between Bordj Omar Driss and Illizi.

[1] A 1,200-strong force of Algerian army and police continued to comb the area using camels, road blocks and helicopters, assisted by a team of specialist officers from anti-terrorist Special Intervention Group.

[2] Many commentators remained perplexed as to how preparations for such a large scale abduction could pass unnoticed in an area where mobility is limited to one highway and a few pistes and valleys frequented by nomads and other locals.

Although the statement by tourism minister Lakhdar Dorbani did not say to whom officials were talking, it indirectly confirmed for the first time that the tourists had been kidnapped, rather than reiterating the government’s former line that they may have been lost.

[8] In fact the GSPC were given safe passage with their captives by the Algerians leaving the south of the country, crossing into Mali near Timiaouine in late June or early July.

In 2007 the GSPC subsequently rebranded themselves as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and were responsible for the two car bombs in Algiers on 12 December 2007 aimed at the Supreme Court and the offices of the UN High Commission for Refugees.