Algiers, Algeria---Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed Islamist reported to have been killed in a US airstrike in Libya Monday, was an Al-Qaeda veteran and the mastermind behind a devastating attack on an Algerian gas plant in 2013.
Branded variously as "the Uncatchable", "The One-Eyed" and "Mr Marlboro", he had been condemned to death by Algeria twice and reported killed in Mali at least once before the US -- which had placed a $5 million bounty on his head -- targeted him in Monday's strike.
As well as the Algerian gas plant siege, he personally supervised the operational plans for twin car bombings in Niger that killed at least 20 people that same year, according to a spokesman for his group.
Belmokhtar was born in 1972 in the Algerian desert city of Ghardaia.
In a rare 2007 interview, he said he was drawn away from home by his fascination with the exploits of the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan, whom he joined in 1991 when he was barely 19.
It was in Afghanistan that he claims to have lost his eye when it was hit by shrapnel, and where he had his first contact with Al-Qaeda.
Nicknamed Lawar (The One-Eyed), he returned to Algeria in 1993, a year after the government sparked civil war by cancelling an election the Islamic Salvation Front was poised to win.
He joined the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which conducted a violent campaign of civilian massacres in its battle against the government, sometimes wiping out entire villages.
Belmokhtar thrived thanks to his intimate knowledge of the nearly lawless "Grey Zone" of southern Algeria, northern Mali and neighbouring Niger. That success was strengthened by a network of tribal alliances that he cemented through marriage.
In 1998, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) broke away from the GIA. Belmokhtar, now also nicknamed "The Uncatchable" by a former French intelligence chief, went with them.
Nine years later, the GSPC formally adopted the jihadist ideology of Osama bin Laden and renamed itself Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
- Split with Al-Qaeda -
They spun a tight network across tribal and business lines that stretch across Africa's Sahel region, comfortable operating in harsh desert terrain and making millions of dollars from the ransoms of European hostages.
But Belmokhtar was pushed out as one of AQIM's top two leaders in northern Mali for what one regional security official said were his "continued divisive activities despite several warnings."
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