Mohamed Larbi Zitout

Mohamed Larbi 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, he pursued a career in diplomacy. By 1995, he had become Algeria' Deputy Ambassador to Libya.. In 1995, however - three years into the Algerian Civil War - he abandoned this career and sought asylum 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.

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