World Peace News: Top Stories

Niger kidnappings show terror's spread
by Todd Pitman

The Associated Press Translate This Article
10 January 2011

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - With stunned diners looking on, the turbaned attackers burst through the metal door of the open-air restaurant and went straight for their targets: two Frenchmen whom they brazenly dragged at gunpoint into a vehicle waiting outside.

The kidnapping, blamed by French authorities on al-Qaida's North Africa branch, ended with the pair's tragic deaths during a failed French-led rescue attempt over the weekend. The bold hostage-taking showed in the most chilling way that abductions like these are no longer limited to the distant, lawless deserts of northwestern Africa where smugglers and bandits have long held sway.

This abduction on Friday happened right in Niger's capital, Niamey.

David Zounmenou, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa, said it shows the kidnappers 'have the capacity to operate freely wherever they want.'

'They are no longer limited to looking for victims in places without state authority,' he observed. 'They can go anywhere.'

Experts say foreigners, mostly European, are increasingly being kidnapped by criminal networks and 'sold' to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM. Al-Qaida has used the hostages to demand the release of the group's prisoners from regional nations, to urge France to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and to call on France to stop 'harming' Muslims—a reference to its ban on the face-covering veil.

Jeremy Keenan, a research professor at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, said at least 56 Europeans have been kidnapped in the area since 2003. The assaults have become increasingly brazen.

Last September, al-Qaida-linked gunmen stormed a heavily guarded residential compound near a French-run uranium mine in Arlit, in northern Niger, seizing five French hostages and two others from Togo and Madagascar. The hostages are believed to have been taken to Mali, which like Niger is part of the vast desert Sahel region. Smugglers with terrorist links lurk there.

AQIM is thought to have doubled since 2008 to about 400 fighters. They are active from Niger to Mauritania—an area spanning 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers). The organization dates back to 2006, when an Algerian-based local militant group, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and recast itself as a regional branch of al-Qaida.

The group has since made large swaths of northern Mali and Niger no-go areas for Westerners—remote territories in the desert with few police that are vulnerable to bandits and smugglers who've roamed freely for decades.

Friday's kidnapping, however, 'means the center of Niamey is just as dangerous as outside of Niamey,' Keenan said of Niger's sandblasted capital, where camels and goats amble on wide boulevards and ubiquitous dirt roads. 'It's a very serious situation. There are bandits all over the place now.'

Though the attack struck fear among expatriates in Niamey, foreign aid workers could still be seen plying the city's roads as usual on Monday.

AQIM has claimed credit for a string of assaults over the last few years, including the 2009 killing of 39-year-old American Christopher Ervin Leggett in Mauritania's capital, allegedly because he was trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.

The French, with tens of thousands of citizens and troops spread across its former colonies, have been a particular target. There are about 1,700 French citizens registered with the embassy in Niger, about 5,000 in Mali and around 2,000 in Mauritania.

In 2009, a man wearing an explosive belt tried to blow himself up in front of the French embassy in Nouakchott. Last week, a Tunisian man claiming allegiance to al-Qaida set off a gas cylinder and fired several gunshot at the French embassy in Mali, wounding two Malians.

In late 2007, gunmen murdered four picnicking French tourists in Mauritania's countryside. The killings prompted organizers of the famed cross-continental Dakar Rally race to move the event to South America. French Defense Minister Alain Juppe, who arrived Monday in Niamey on an emergency visit, said al-Qaida militants were most likely responsible for Friday's abductions. The victims, Antoine de Leocour and Vincent Delory, were both 25. De Leocour was to marry a local woman in a week with Delory as his best man.

The pair were snatched from Le Toulousain, a bar-restaurant on a dirt road in Niamey that is protected only by a thin white metal gate. The assailants pulled out guns and told the two to follow them. Two more men were waiting in a truck outside.

Niger says its troops pursued the kidnappers and clashed with them about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Niamey. A second skirmish took place about 17 kilometers (10 miles) west of Ouallam, a remote district near the Mali border. French forces intervened in that battle, rappelling from helicopters in a failed attempt to rescue the hostages

The Frenchmen were found dead afterward—though it remains unclear whether they were executed by their captors or killed in crossfire. Niger said three of its paramilitary soldiers were killed and four wounded.

Juppe has defended the rescue mission, saying that doing nothing would have signaled to the kidnappers 'that in the end France doesn't fight terrorism.'

Last July, a 78-year-old ailing French aid worker Michel Germaneau was executed by al-Qaida militants three months after his capture, in retaliation for another failed rescue attempt that killed six militants.

___

Associated Press writers Dalatou Mamane in Niamey, Niger and Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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