ALGERIA: Capture of the Chief

Of all the rebel commanders in Algeria, none has given the French more trouble than handsome Yacef Saadi, the 29-year-old ex-baker who for nearly two years hcs been chief of the FLN (Algerian National Liberation Front) in the city of Algiers. Within the labyrinthine depths of Algiers’ Casbah, Yacef and his mistress, an Algerian law student named Zohra Drif, were uncrowned monarchs. Under the very nose of French police and paratroopers, Yacef collected “taxes,” dispensed his own justice, and organized the bloody bombing attacks of cafés and streets that have kept Algiers’ French edgy for months. Often spotted by the French, Yacef evaded them with such ease and regularity that his fellow Moslems came to believe that he had baraka, the gift of good fortune that Allah bestows on a favored few.

At 3 o’clock one morning last week, Yacef’s baraka ran out. Acting on an informer’s tip, green-bereted paratroopers of the Foreign Legion rushed into the Casbah and smashed in the door of No. 3 Rue Caton. As Paratrooper Lieut. Colonel Jean Pierre and one of his sergeants broke in, Yacef and his girl friend Zohra scrambled through a trapdoor into a secret chamber above the stairwell of the house. Before he slammed the trapdoor shut, Yacef cut loose with a burst of machine-gun fire, then tossed down a hand grenade that went off in the paratroopers’ faces but did not seriously wound them. “Surrender, Yacef,” shouted the French officer, “or we’ll blow up the staircase!”

Remembering the three-hour fight to the death put up by two of Yacef’s lieutenants a month earlier (TIME, Sept. 9), the Legionnaires expected a machine-gun burst for an answer. Instead, Yacef called back: “I’ll surrender if you treat me as a prisoner of war.” Thus began a strange, two-hour parley during which Yacef added one more condition: “Don’t take Zohra away from me. We don’t want to be separated.” Finally, at 5:30 he shouted: “Throw up our clothes. We’re nearly naked.” Then, hands overhead and properly dressed, Yacef and Zohra came down.

Within hours of his capture, word raced through the Casbah that Yacef was “singing.” Six of his top lieutenants were rounded up by the French police, and whirring helicopters blanketed the native quarters with leaflets proclaiming that Yacef now conceded that he had misled his fellow Moslems by urging them to revolt. His capture was a serious blow to the Algerian rebels. Anxious to show that it was not a fatal one, Moslem terrorists slipped into the heart of Constantine, third biggest (pop. 118,000) of Algeria’s cities, and for 20 minutes sprayed shop fronts, office windows and automobiles with submachine-gun bullets.