 It is believed that he joined the armed Islamist movement in 1992 and later advanced to become the second-in-command of the GSPC, but his name did not appear on the GSPC website until 2004.His nickname "El Para" is derived from "paratrooper", as he is believed to have been a trained parachutist in the Algerian armed forces before integrating in the Islamist network.Saifi became widely known when he was identified as one of the kidnappers who abducted in 2003 a group of 32 tourists, most of them German, in Algeria.