The Nation Newspaper

Tag: AQIM

  • Al Qaeda frees abducted Swede

    Hostage Johan Gustafsson, held by al-Qaeda in Mali since 2011, has been freed, the Swedish government said on Monday.

    Mr. Gustafsson, 42, is being flown back to Sweden from Africa, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, said in a statement.

    The BBC reports that the Swede was seized by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) along with two other men, one of whom was freed in a dawn raid in 2015.

    Ms Wallström said Mr. Gustafsson was “in good spirits.”

    “It is with great pleasure that I can announce that Johan Gustafsson has been released,” Ms Wallström added.

    She said the Swede’s release was thanks to “extensive efforts” and co-operation between the Swedish foreign ministry, police and “foreign authorities.”

    Ms Wallström said she had spoken with Mr. Gustafsson, who she described as being “happy” and “overwhelmed” by Monday’s events.

    “I cannot say more at the current time,” she added.

    Sweden’s former Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt said Mr. Gustafsson’s kidnapping weighed heavily on his mind during his time in the role, which ended in 2014.

    He tweeted on Monday: “Extremely gratifying that Johan Gustafsson is free. No single case concerned me more as foreign minister.”

  • AQIM lists Burkina Faso hotel attackers

    Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on Monday identified three fighters it said were responsible for the weekend attacks in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou that killed 29 people.

    Gunmen from the group stormed the Cappuccino restaurant and the Splendid Hotel on Friday night, singling out white people for slaughter, Reuters reported.

    Eight Burkinabes, six Canadians, three Ukrainians and two French people were killed, among others.

    In a statement, AQIM named the three attackers as al-Battar al-Ansari, Abu Muhammad al-Buqali al-Ansari and Ahmed al-Fulani al-Ansari, according to SITE Intelligence group.

    Al-Ansari is a nom de guerre that usually designates somebody from northern Mali, although it might just indicate where the brigade is based or originates from.

    The statement included a picture of the three apparently adolescent “heroes” in beige fatigues carrying Kalashnikovs. Two were black and another, smiling faintly, was light-skinned, suggesting he might be from an Arab or Tuareg group.

    The streets of Ouagadougou were unusually quiet on Monday in a country unaccustomed to the frequent jihadist attacks that have plagued its Western neighbour Mali.

    AQIM also claimed a similar attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali’s capital Bamako in November that killed 20 people.

    Burkina Faso’s new government, named just days ago following a year-long transition period punctuated by unrest, has declared three days of national mourning.

     

  • Burkina Faso, Mali to coordinate forces after attacks

    Burkina Faso and Mali have agreed to work together to counter the growing threat of Islamic militants in West Africa by sharing intelligence and conducting joint security patrols following two deadly and well-coordinated attacks in the region.

    Their prime ministers met on Sunday, two days after al Qaeda militants seized the Splendid Hotel in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou, opened fire on a restaurant and attacked another hotel nearby, killing at least 28 people from at least seven countries, and wounding 50 other people, Reuters reported.

    The assault, claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), follows a similar raid in November on a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, which killed 20 people, including citizens of Russia, China and the United States.

    In a statement on the Burkina Faso assault that was reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, AQIM said: “This blessed operation is but a drop in the sea of global jihad.”

    The militant group identified three attackers and called the targeted hotel and surrounding areas “one of the most dangerous dens of global espionage in the west of the African continent.”

    The exact details of the cooperation between Burkina Faso and Mali were not immediately clear, but the patrols and intelligence sharing mark an intent by the two countries to prevent the spread of militancy as AQIM and others expand operations in the region beyond their usual reach.

  • Burkina Faso hotel siege declared over

    A siege is over at a Burkina Faso hotel seized by suspected Islamist gunmen, the government announced, but reports said a nearby hotel is now under attack.

    In all, 126 hostages were freed at the Splendid Hotel in the West African state’s capital, Ouagadougou, the interior minister said.

    Three gunmen were killed, he added, amid reports of 20 deaths during the attack, which also targeted a cafe.

    French Special Forces are helping local troops in the security operation, the BBC reports.

    French President Francois Hollande has condemned the “odious” attack on the former French colony.

    The Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group said it carried out the attack.

    In November, an AQIM attack on a hotel in the Malian capital Bamako left 19 people dead.

  • Jonathan, African leaders to discuss militants’ threat

    Jonathan, African leaders to discuss militants’ threat

    President Goodluck Jonathan, facing a mounting Islamist insurgency at home, will discuss ways of tackling militancy across the continent with African heads of state while in South Africa, his spokesman said.

    The meeting follows warnings from Nigeria and its neighbours that Boko Haram – which has killed thousands of Nigerians during its five-year-old insurgency, and last month kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls – now threatens the security of the region.

    Leaders from every corner of the continent would meet before South African President Jacob Zuma’s inauguration on Saturday to “focus on collective action to effectively roll back the scourge of terrorism in Africa,” Reuben Abati said.

    As well as Boko Haram, regional and world powers are increasingly worried about the growing reach of groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Somalia’s al Shabaab, which has attacked Uganda and Kenya and this week threatened to unleash teenage suicide bombers in Nairobi, Reuters reports.

    Security experts said cross-border intelligence sharing between countries threatened by militant groups is woefully weak.

    Jonathan and the military have been criticised in Nigeria for the slowness of their reaction to the mass abduction, which took place in the remote northeastern village of Chibok, near the borders of Cameroon and Chad.

    Nigeria accepted help from the United States, Britain, France and China last week and around 80 U.S. troops were arriving in Chad to start a mission to try to free the schoolgirls.

  • How I escaped from my captors – French hostage

    The French hostage held for 11 months in Nigeria by the Boko Haram sect said he made his audacious run for freedom after his captor left a key in the door by mistake.

    Francis Collomp, speaking on the TF1 channel on Thursday, described how on the night of November 16 one of his captors entered the dungeon where he was kept to perform the ablutions required for Islamic prayer, but left the keys on the door.

    “While he was in the bathroom, very quietly I opened the closed door. I had all my things ready to leave and then I locked it (behind me),” AFP quoted the 63-year-old engineer as saying on TFI channel.

    “I ran into an alley towards the main road, then on the road I started walking quickly so that no one would notice me,” he said.

    After trekking for four to five kilometres, Collomp found a motorcycle taxi, which took him to a police station in Zaria, a nearby town.

    The Frenchman was abducted at gunpoint in Katsina State last December, and was held for nine months in Kano before he was brought to Zaria, about 160 kilometres away by road two months ago.

    Collomp said he was “in the loop” about negotiations for his release, and was spurred to action after failing to be freed in early summer and with the unlucky fate of others in his position on his mind.

    “I should have been freed in June but that didn’t happen. Then they told me that things had hit a dead end. I also knew the story of the journalists that were killed, and that had an effect on me,” he said, referring to the two French radio correspondents kidnapped and murdered by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Mali on November 2.

    Collomp prepared his escape for months, he said, walking up to 15 kilometres a day in circles in his cell to stay fit, anticipating a long walk awaiting him outside.

    He lost 38 kilos in total, admitting he had been “on the heavy side” beforehand.

    French President Francois Hollande compared Collomp’s escape to “an adventure story” on the day of his return to France, saying he was proud of his compatriot and his “exceptional courage.”

    A Roman Catholic priest, 42-year-old Georges Vandenbeusch, was kidnapped in northern Cameroon and reportedly taken by militants to Nigeria in mid-November.

     

     

  • Al Qaeda kills ‘French Mali hostage’

    Al Qaeda kills ‘French Mali hostage’

    Al-Qaeda’s North Africa branch said it has killed a French businessman captured in Mali in 2011, Mauritania’s ANI news agency reports.

    Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) told ANI that it killed Philippe Verdon on March 10, in retaliation for France’s intervention in Mali.

    Mr. Verdon and another Frenchman were seized in the town of Hombori.

    France sent troops to Mali in January saying al-Qaeda-linked militants threatened to march on the capital.

    In recent weeks French-led forces have been fighting militants in the remote Ifoghas Mountains of northern Mali.

    Early on Wednesday the French foreign ministry said it was trying to verify the report by Agence Nouakchott d’Information.

    BBC says Mr. Verdon and Serge Lazarevic were said to be on a business trip when they were captured at their hotel in November 2011.

    AQIM claimed it was behind the kidnapping and published photos of the pair in captivity.

    Besides Mr. Verdon, a total of 14 French nationals are being held by Islamist groups in Africa.

    Six of them are thought to be detained in Mali. They include four hostages kidnapped by AQIM at a uranium mine in northern Niger in 2010.

    France currently has 4,000 troops in Mali, who are assisting thousands of Malian, Chadian and other African troops.

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  • French hostages’ families seek negotiations with Al Qaeda

    The families of four hostages being held by Al-Qaeda’s North African branch on Monday urged the French government to seek negotiations with the militant group in the hope of securing their relatives’ release.

    AFP says the call was issued against a background of fears for the lives of the hostages following the reported killing of two Al-Qaeda-linked leaders by French-backed Chadian troops in Mali over the weekend.

    “France must give AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) clear signals of a willingness to negotiate, in liaison with (the hostages’ employers) Areva and Vinci,” said a statement issued on behalf of the families of four hostages seized at uranium mine in Niger in 2010.

    According to Chadian officials, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the mastermind of an assault on an Algerian gas plant that left 37 foreign hostages dead in January, and AQIM leader Abdelhamid Abou Zeid were killed last week in an assault on rebel bases in the Ifoghas mountains of northern Mali.

    France has been extremely guarded about the reports, amid concerns the hostages may have been used as human shields or could be subject to reprisal executions.

    The hostages’ families have repeatedly expressed concern about the possible consequences of France’s military intervention in its former colony but Monday’s statement was the first time they have publicly challenged the government’s approach.

    “Today we consider that military operations and the use of force will not result in the hostages being saved,” said Rene Robert, the grandfather of Pierre Legrand, one of four hostages seized by AQIM in Niger in September 2010.

    “We want a strong signal to be sent to AQIM to demonstrate a willingness to negotiate,” he told AFP.

     

  • Al Qaeda leader Abou Zeid killed in Mali

    …France cautious
    A senior al-Qaeda militant has been killed in northern Mali, Chadian President Idriss Deby has said.

    He said the country’s forces killed Abdelhamid Abou Zeid during clashes in the remote region.

    He is said to be second-in-command of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which is fighting foreign forces in Mali.

    The Algerian national is accused of killing two Western hostages – Briton Edwin Dyer in 2009 and Frenchman Michel Germaneau the following year.

    BBC says that, if confirmed, his death will immediately raise questions over the state of several French hostages who are widely believed to have been in Abou Zeid’s custody.

    A United States official – speaking on condition of anonymity – said Washington found reports that Abou Zeid was killed “very credible”, according to the AFP news agency.

    However, France reacted with caution to the reports, with government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem stressing that his death was so far unconfirmed.

    Earlier unverified reports in the French media said that the militant was killed during fighting against French army units.

    In January France sent some 3,500 troops to northern Mali to oust various Islamist militant groups who had seized a vast area of the Sahara desert.

    Chad is one of several African countries to have supported the French operation.

     

  • Mali’s operation reaches ‘final phase’

    Mali’s operation reaches ‘final phase’

    French President Francois Hollande has said his country’s forces are engaged in the “final phase” of the fight against militants in northern Mali.

    He said there had been heavy fighting in the Ifoghas mountains, where members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) were thought to be hiding.

    Mr. Hollande also praised Chadian troops for their efforts in the same area, BBC says.

    13 Chadian soldiers and some 65 militants were killed in clashes on Friday, according to the Chadian army.

    Chad’s government has promised to deploy 2,000 troops as part of the African-led International Support Mission to Mali (Afisma).

    Speaking in Paris on Saturday, President Hollande said “heavy fighting” was taking place in the far north of Mali, near the Algerian border.

    “This is the final phase of the process since it is in that massif [the Ifoghas mountains] that AQIM forces have probably regrouped,” he said.

    “Our Chadian friends launched an attack yesterday which was very harsh with significant loss of life,” Mr. Hollande added. “I want to praise what the Chadians are doing.”

    The latest fighting was between Islamists militants and ethnic Tuareg in the In-Khalil area, near the border town of Tessalit.