Negotiations For Release of Abducted Algerian Diplomats Enter Critical Stage

The so-called “Mujao West African Jihad Army”, an offshoot of Aqim, which has been holding 7 Algerian diplomats since last April 5th in northern Mali is negotiating for the release of and for the delivery of medicine for one of the ailing hostages. The Algerian hostages kidnapped in Gao have been threatened by their Mujao captors with execution if their demands are not met. An ultimatum issued of late by the kidnappers has been extended to allow for more negotiations with the Algerian authorities through a third party.

• For its part, the Algerian government says it refuses to give in to blackmail or pay a ransom for the hostages’ release. Secret negotiations are said to be underway between the two sides through Azawad members settled in northern Mali.
• Informed sources told Echorouk that these negotiations had now entered a crucial stage and that a breakthrough was likely in the next few days barring an untoward contingency on account of the intricacy of the affair.
• The “Mujao” kidnappers have demanded 15 million euros and the freeing of up to 30 Islamist detainees imprisoned in Mauritania and Algeria, two of whom are accused of having participated in the kidnapping of the seven Algerian diplomats.
• There are believed to be other hostages in Mujao hands kidnapped in Niger, bringing the total number of captives held by the armed islamist group to 16.

• The African Union, Algeria and Mali are seeking UN intervention in order to bring the rebel Islamists to heel.
• In a separate development, gunmen in Mali’s rebel-held north released on Tuesday a Swiss woman who had been abducted in Timbuktu on April 15, witnesses said.

• The Swiss woman, Beatrice Stockly, was released some seven kilometers (4 miles) north of Timbuktu by members of Islamist group Ansar Dine, and picked up by a helicopter containing members of Burkina Faso’s military, the witnesses said.

• A mix of Tuareg separatists and Islamist rebels captured Timbuktu on April 1 in the final leg of their lightning advance southwards through Mali’s desert north, as government forces retreated in the aftermath of a coup in the capital Bamako.

• North African states are becoming increasingly worried that in the wake of the Nato regime change in Libya, Islamist elements of the former Gaddafi regime security forces are destabilizing their countries.
• Intimidation, land confiscations and kidnapping children to serve as soldiers, porters and as ‘wives’ for the forces are continuing.
• The Islamist groups are heavily armed with loads of weapons taken from Gaddafi’s military storehouses which have already enabled the rebel Tuareg fighters to carve out a statelet for themselves in the north of Mali.