French tourist and Algerian driver kidnapped in Niger

[Dave The Hat]

So looking at the map it looks likely that he was probably held in the Kidal area.

Kidal is almost in a straight line across the Sahara to where An-abangharit is located (point of capture), then 'found in the north Mali desert', but taken to the Tin-Zawatine border by those that found him (a piste connects Kidal to Tin-Zawatine).

Hoping for some good news on the Frenchman.

[andrasz]

Originally Posted by Dave The Hat

More analysis on the recent kidnapping:

Niger: Another kidnap in the north

[moro]

Originally Posted by Chris Scott

Wasn't sure whether to believe Ennahar but it's on the BBC now (via Reuters and probably all other media outlets, maybe even Fox too ;-).

BBC News - Kidnapped Algerian driver 'is released in Mali'

Ch

glad to hear your faith has been restored

[priffe]

Al Qaeda claims kidnap of French man in Niger: TV | Top News | Reuters

Al Qaeda claims kidnap of French man in Niger: TV
Thu May 6, 2010 1:49am
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's North Africa wing claimed responsibility for kidnapping a French man last month in northern Niger, Al Jazeera television said on Thursday, citing a statement by the militant group's North Africa wing.
"The group said its members managed to kidnap engineer Michel Germano in the north of Niger on the 22nd of the previous month," Al Jazeera said.
"The group asked France, and those whom it called its allies in the region, to release its jailed members."
On April 22, a Niger military source said a French tourist and his Algerian driver were kidnapped in northern Niger, near the West African country's border with Mali and Algeria.
The seizure is the latest in a string of attacks in the vast desert region, where governments have little presence and a collection of bandits, former rebels, smugglers and groups linked to al Qaeda operate.
Al Qaeda in the Islamist Maghreb (AQIM) said in the statement the retired French engineer worked in the Algerian oil sector and headed an association in Niger, Al Jazeera said.

[Ulrich]

LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's North African wing claimed responsibility on Friday for the kidnapping of Frenchman Michel Germaneau who was seized in northern Niger in April, the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said*.

SITE, which monitors Islamist websites, said al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had posted an audio message from 78-year-old Germaneau, his picture and a copy of his identification card.

* Don't need SITE Intelligence Group, found it myself.

BBC - UPDATE 2-Al Qaeda says responsible for kidnap of Frenchman

In the name of God the Merciful

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

Abduction of the French engineer, retired "Michelle Germano"
ـــــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــــــــــ ــــــــــــــــــــ

Praise be to God and prayer and peace upon the Messenger of Allah, Lord of the Messengers and the Imam of the Mujahideen, and his family and his companions pure, but after:
In time as the forces of apostasy special meeting Pettmnrast to fight the Jihad and the Mujahideen to please their masters the crusaders, and not far from the place of meeting clients, managed group from the militants on Thursday, 7 Jumada I 1431 H north of Niger the kidnapping: "Michelle Germano / Michel Germaneau" architect of France retired work in the oil sector and now runs the Algerian Society of Niger does not know the real objectives of their activity.
We, through this statement to announce the legitimate demand of the mujahideen from France for the release of their habitat:
Is not to release our prisoners, who will arrive in French negotiator list of their names.



And we include this statement with an appeal of the kidnapped French President Sarkozy, one of the links:

The Audio-File: germdivx.avi - 9245 KB - in 15 minutes - sorry, ISDN only for upload. - Done

And the original statement:



Ulrich

[Dave The Hat]

Niger jails Algerian driver of kidnapped Frenchman:

Niger jails driver of French hostage - source | News by Country | Reuters

[Ulrich]

Since the group Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb has ordered to attack Western interests, he confirms it by all kinds of terrorist actions. Well organized and have huge resources to interfere where he wants, he is truly afraid. Specializes in the kidnapping, Al Qaeda has always brought anxiety to the families of those he retains. A struggle that leads so fierce, and blackmail is often to demand the release of his men in order to execute the hostages

L'Observateur - Abidine, Judas du Français ?

Gogoonisch - E

Ulrich

[priffe]

Al-Qaida group says it abducted Frenchman in Niger

In a 48-second clip, Germaneau appeals to Sarkozy to "find a good solution for me." He says he is 78 years old, suffers from a heart condition and that he has run out of medicine.

Summer is here and there are three people held by kidnappers in Mali. The two Spaniards have now spent over six months in captivity.

[Ulrich]

According to our sources in Tuareg country, the situation remains particularly precarious in the entire region.
The last meeting in January 2010 between political and military leaders of the Tuareg movement highlighted tracks to bring back stability in the region, among others, the movement sought a resumption of dialogue between the government and the Tuaregs in the spirit of the Peace Agreement signed between the two parties in 2006.
Part Tuareg also proposed the establishment of a project to fight against Islamist groups in the region (invite them to return to their home countries, Algeria and Mauritania).

Issikta - Mali/Tiraillements géopolitiques en pays touareg

Gogoonisch - E

Ulrich

[Dave The Hat]

Mauritania’s defence minister ruled out freeing Al-Qaeda prisoners in return for Western hostages held in his country in an interview with AFP Wednesday.

"We won’t free any terrorist. It is a matter of principle. This would jeopardise the security of our country and our people," Hamadi Ould Baba Ould Hamadi said.

Mauritania won't free Qaeda prisoners for hostages - Temoust.org | Le portail du peuple touareg berbère Kel Tamasheq

[Ulrich]

DUBAI — Al-Qaeda's north African branch issued an Internet message on Sunday threatening to kill a French hostage kidnapped in Niger unless Paris meets demands within 15 days, US monitors reported.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, -- which had demanded a prisoner exchange in a message released on May 13 -- said France faced a 15-day "deadline" starting from Monday.

AFP - Qaeda threatens to execute French captive: US monitors

The statement:

In the name of God the Merciful


Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

Final deadline to France for "Michelle Germano"
ـــــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــ

Praise be to God, and prayer and peace upon the Messenger of Allah, and his family and his family and from Allah, but after:
Michel Germaneau" Passing through more than two months and a half on the abduction of the French "Michelle Germano / Michel Germaneau" by militants north of Nigeria, however, that the French government expressed indifference College, citing its national life: the fact that this man is important to her and not of great value.
And is the excuse they should know the French people very clearly: that Sarkozy differentiate between people and breaks it down into two layers, a layer of first-class merit to save her life and a layer of second-degree worthy of death at the hands of the Mujahideen and should not be the French government to make any effort to save it.
And because the demands of the mujahideen in this case were reasonable and simple, and because we want to establish final argument to the French government and give it a golden opportunity to save their habitat has decided Mujahideen grant deadline to France does not stretch and will not be repeated 15 days starting on Monday: 12/07 / 2010.
And the end of this period and not responding to legitimate demands, then France could be sentenced to death on their habitats and be Sarkozy has decided to finally commit the same folly committed by the "Golden Brown" to the citizenship of the British.
And repeat the last call to the public opinion of France and the family of the kidnapped to put pressure on their reckless Here is the last chance of the Mujahideen is priceless and now is the time limit will not be repeated to save this man and now have done our best to find a satisfactory solution has Forewarned is forearmed.
Blessings and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad and his family and his companions all.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
Andalusia Foundation for Media Production

ـــــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــــــــــــــــــــ ــ
‏Thursday, 26 Rajab, 1431, corresponding to: 07/08/2010

Ulrich

[Ulrich]

The ultimatum issued by Al Qaeda to France reveals the willingness of the organization to end this case.

L'Expression - Sarkozy saura-t-il convaincre Al Qaîda?

Gogoonisch - E

Ulrich