Official: Chief of Algerian police killed by colleague

Chief of Algerian police killed by colleague

ALGIERS, Algeria — The powerful chief of Algeria’s national police, on the front line in the war against Islamist insurgents, was shot and killed by a colleague during a meeting Thursday at his headquarters, authorities said.

Two others were injured in the attack on Ali Tounsi, including a security chief for the Algiers region, a law enforcement official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give information to the media.

The silver-haired Tounsi, 73, headed this North African nation’s police for 16 years. He was among the most powerful security officials in Algeria and had been an institution in the country’s fight against Islamic militants since the 1990s, when insurgents tried to overthrow the military-backed government. The violence, which almost brought the country to its knees, killed up to 200,000 people.

Tounsi’s attacker turned his weapon on himself after the shooting at the security headquarters, located on the waterfront of this Mediterranean port city, the Interior Ministry said.

Reports differed over whether the shooter survived.

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the attacker, a police colonel, died after shooting himself. Algeria’s APS national news agency, citing an Interior Ministry statement, said he was seriously injured and taken to a hospital. The ministry did not identify the attacker.

A judicial inquiry has been opened into the shooting, APS said, adding that the attacker had been seized by a “fit of madness.”

“This shocks because … normally you think that someone like him is untouchable,” Nasser Djabbi, a sociologist who closely follows Algerian developments, said by telephone. Tounsi was seen as “a good chief who oversaw the police in a difficult period, against terrorism, against delinquency.”

The assassination took place in a climate of political tension in Algeria, which has been rocked by a corruption investigation targeting management at Algeria’s national oil company, Sonatrach.

Algeria has long been victimized by widespread corruption that did not spare the police corps.

The law enforcement official who spoke with the AP said the attacker shot the chief because he was suspected of dubious transactions linked to police work and learned he would be fired. The information could not be independently confirmed.

In recent years, Tounsi continued to battle holdouts in the Islamist insurgency, who pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s international terrorist network and formed a group called Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa.

Sporadic terror attacks continue, despite President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s national reconciliation plan aimed at luring out extremists and getting them to lay down their arms and reintegrate society.

Tounsi was in the midst of a modernization program and a massive recruiting program to increase the size of Algeria’s police force.

Algerian media have reported for months that Tounsi had tense relations with Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, who oversees the nation’s police.

The interior minister reportedly wanted to retire Tounsi, one of the pillars of power who had managed to hang on to his post as the old guard was slowly replaced. As a young man, he fought in the brutal war of independence against France that ended with Algerian independence in 1962.

The interior minister praised Tounsi as a man “who devoted his life to the service of the nation, to the anti-terrorism fight … and modernization of the national police,” a statement said.