The Public Security Intelligence agency, which is Japan’s national Intelligence Agency, has once again classified the separatist Polisario front as a terrorist organization.
In its latest report on global terrorism, entitled “Kokusai Terrorismu Youran 2014,” the Japanese agency specifies that the Tindouf camps, erected in the Algerian desert, are “a place of frequent kidnappings” and thus fall into the “dangerous zone” category.
In its previous report, the Japanese agency had already sounded the alarm and exposed the Polisario’s connections with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as well as with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and other terrorist groups that are active in the Sahel strip, especially in northern Mali.
“AQIM has alliances with AQAP and the Polisario Front in Algeria,” notes the intelligence agency which recalls in this connection that many foreign tourists have been kidnapped in the Sahara Desert and were released in exchange for ransoms that amounted in some cases to millions.
The Japanese intelligence agency had already classified the Polisario as a terrorist movement in its 2011 report.
The agency decided to make of its Review of International Terrorism, a compilation of information on global terrorism trends, a yearly publication after the upsurge of the terrorist threat worldwide.
The Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) is administered by the Ministry of Justice. It is engaged in gathering and analyzing intelligence relating to both internal and external situations that could affect the country’s public security.
The Japanese security services are neither the first nor the last to point the finger at the Polisario Front for its secret dealings with terrorism. Many well-known think tanks and analysts have repeatedly warned against the Polisario’s connections with dreadful terrorist networks.
The many desperate Sahrawi youths or military from the Tindouf camps who attempt to escape unemployment and poverty or ill-treatment by the Polisario militia are sometimes lured by terrorist networks which offer them enticing sums of money, especially if they carry out successful kidnapping operations of Westerners.
It was thus that the relationship between the Polisario and AQIM and other terrorist groups in the Sahel was established.