DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — A tape released Thursday on a jihadist forum shows the first images of a group of hostages including five French citizens since they were seized two weeks ago in Niger by an al Qaeda offshoot and taken into the desert.
The four-minute tape shows still images of the hostages sitting cross-legged in the sand with a gently sloping dune behind them. French officials believe the seven hostages are now in the bordering West African nation of Mali.
The hostages were grabbed in the middle of the night on Sept. 16 from their guarded villas in the uranium mining town of Arlit in Niger where they were working for French nuclear giant Areva.
The French Foreign Ministry said the tape was encouraging because the images show the hostages alive.
“Even if we don’t know what date it was taken it constitutes an encouraging sign in the sense that it shows all the hostages alive,” a ministry statement said, adding that France “is doing everything to obtain their liberation.”
The tape’s release comes as top officials from Areva planned a visit to Niger on Thursday, where they were to meet with the government and travel to the town where the employees were abducted.
Men brandishing automatic weapons and face-covering turbans stand behind the hostages. During the filming, the hostages are questioned about their names, ages and marital status, according to the translation provided to reporters by U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group.
Five of the hostages are French citizens; the other two are from Togo and Madagascar. They are also asked if they know who their kidnappers are, and acknowledge the kidnappers are al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.
The terror group has its roots in an extremist Islamic group in Algeria that brokered an alliance with al Qaeda in 2006.
Since then, AQIM has kidnapped more than a dozen Europeans including tourists and aid workers. The group is believed to be using the ransom payments to bankroll their operations and with each kidnapping their tactics have become more bold.
The attack on the Areva compound in Niger is their most daring to date. The heavily armed gunmen were able to get past the town’s security cordon which includes 350 of Niger’s troops as well as 150 security guards hired by Areva.
In the video produced by AQIM’s media arm, al-Andalus Media Foundation, they explain that the kidnapping came in the “context of retaliation.” It is a reference to a joint French-Mauritanian raid on an AQIM base in Mali earlier this summer that killed at least six members of the terror cell.
Soon after the raid in July, AQIM announced they had assassinated French hostage Michel Germaneau, a 78-year-old aid worker who had been seized in Niger in April. The tape warns that the French — who have sent a regiment of soldiers to Niger — should not attempt another rescue mission as they had done for Germaneau.
The French defense minister had said that France was willing and interested in talking to the terror group.
The al Qaeda-linked group has invaded large swaths of the desert region spanning portions of Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Algeria. Famous tourists spots like Timbuktu are now on the no-go list of numerous foreign embassies, including the U.S. and France.
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