Four months later, he was reported to have masterminded two suicide attacks in Niger, targeting a military base in Agadez and the French-run uranium mine in Arlit, killing at least 25 people.
He has been declared dead many times, the latest by a US air strike on 14 June in Libya, according to the country's authorities. However, Belmokhtar has survived previous announcements of his death. In March 2013, the Chadian army claimed to have killed him, only for him to resurface months later.
For years, the US government has been offering a reward of up to $5m (£3.3m) for information leading to his location.
"He is one of the best known warlords of the Sahara," Stephen Ellis, an academic at the African Studies Centre in Leiden in The Netherlands, says.
He became known as "Mr Marlboro" because of his role in cigarette-smuggling across the Sahel region to finance his jihad, which he has recently waged under the banner of the Signed-in-Blood Battalion.
"Belmokhtar has been active in political, ideological and criminal circles in the Sahara for the past two decades," Jon Marks, an academic at the London-based think-tank Chatham House, told the BBC.
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