Mohamed Larbi Zitout

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Mohamed Al-arabi Zitout is an Algerian activist and former diplomat.

After graduating from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration in Algiers and obtaining a master's degree in International Relations^[1], he pursued a career in diplomacy. By 1995, he had become Algeria' Deputy Ambassador to Libya.^[2]. In 1995, however - three years into the Algerian Civil War - he resigned from his position and came to live in the United Kingdom. He claimed to have learned that the Armed Islamic Groups, whose atrocities were already becoming prominent, were in many cases being controlled by the government as part of a deliberate strategy:

From 1995 onwards, these groups were no longer merely infiltrated, but completely taken over; they became a counter-guerrilla, counter-revolutionary phenomenon. The GIA became another armed branch, theoretically Islamist but in practice doing the work of the military security, of the Algerian regime.^[3]

Muhamad L'abri Zitout, antiguo viceembajador argelino en Libia, aseguró que un responsable de la seguridad le confesó: "La gran mayoría del GIA somos nosotros mismos". (Mohamed al-arabi Zitout, former Algerian Deputy Ambassador to Libya, insists that a security official confessed to him: "The great majority of the GIA are us ourselves.")^[4]

Since leaving Algeria, he has become an outspoken opponent of the Algerian government and human rights advocate. He has been interviewed or appeared as a commentator in a number of newspapers and broadcast media, such as the BBC[Bristish Broadcasting channel], ABC^[5] and Al-Jazeera^[6], and has contributed chapters to An Inquiry into the Algerian Massacres ("Les Régimes Arabes et le Conflit Algérien", p. 847) and Quelle réconciliation pour l'Algérie? ("La reconciliation passe par réhabilitation des victimes, de la nation et de l'Etat", p. 121.) He is a founding member of Justitia Universalis^[7], a human rights organisation set up in 2001 dedicated to fighting impunity, and is the spokesperson for Al Karama for Human Rights^[8], an organisation for human rights in the Arab world.

In 2007, he co-founded Rachad, an organisation dedicated to overthrowing the Algerian government through mass nonviolent resistance.