The Signed-in Blood Battalion

"The Libyan government in the east of Libya confirms that the U.S. fighter jets conducted airstrikes last night in a mission which resulted in the death of the terrorist Belmokhtar."
Government of Libya statement

ANI/Handout    Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who lost his left eye in combat, has been reported dead a number of times over the years.

The hostage taking at a BP-operated gas plant in Algeria in 2013 represented a bold and unexpected attack by an al-Qaeda affiliate that drew the attention of the world to the vulnerability of workers in such places where terrorist attacks can take place to deliver the message of jihad. Islamist jihadists targeting symbols of the West, its insulting decadence, its disgraceful status as a democratic enclave spurning Islamic values, its intolerable exploitation of Muslim countries, stripping them of their assets and their valuable resources.

Expatriate workers were taken hostage during a siege of the sprawling plant, and thirty-nine of the hostages including ten Japanese and three Americans died when an Algerian military assault took place to rout the Islamists and rescue the workers. Two Islamist-radicalized Canadians were among the dead attackers. They had travelled to North Africa for the express purpose of joining the terrorist group headed by Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

This was a man who had fallen out with al-Qaeda, a man who preferred to make his own rules and regulations and act in accord with them, rather than accede to the authority of the central agency of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Mokhtar Belmokhtar had planned the abduction of two Canadian diplomats in Niger. They were eventually released after ransom was paid. Belmokhtar was placed on an Interpol warrant by the Canadian Department of Justice.

He had already been sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Algeria for decades spent staging "massacres", "murder" and "aggravated theft" in Algeria, according to authorities there. And in the wake of the disastrous 2013 Algerian gas plant attack, the United States issued a $5-million reward to see him brought "to justice". Justice, as it happened, arrived on Saturday when American F-15s streaked over the Libyan Desert to slam bombs into an al-Qaeda position where the man was assumed to be hiding.

U.S. State Department This wanted poster from the website of the U.S. State Department's Rewards For Justice program shows a mugshot of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, charged with leading the attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013 that killed at least 35 hostages, including three Americans.

This would not be the first time the terrorist commander reaped his martyrdom reward. In 2013 the Chadian military circulated its triumph in destroying a terrorist base and in the process numbering "several dead terrorists, including their leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar", among their successes. It took several months for Belmokhtar to be miraculously resurrected; it appears the virgins in Paradise rejected his advances so he descended to Earth to try once again.

And now, though he is dead but not mourned since martyrs are celebrated, the announcement may, yet again, be hopefully precipitate. A Libyan Islamist has rained in the triumphant parade of accomplishments to state that although U.S. bombs had killed four Islamic terrorists, Belmokhtar, alas, was not among them

At the age of 43, the man had amassed a reputation reflecting his experiences as a seasoned mujahadeen. Born in east Algeria, he fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet Invasion of the country, training with jihadist groups. He returned to fight in the Algerian Civil War in the early 1990s. Since then he operated out of the Sahara desert, planning hostage taking, smuggling illegal cigarettes bringing him up to $50-million in profits in his enterprise and earning him the sobriquet "Mr. Marlboro".

"Mr. Marlboro" may yet be among the living to continue his pursuits that most please his ideology.