The “Salafist Group”: We’ll not release hostages until two of our elements are freed

The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, belonging to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said it will release the six Westerners, including the UN special envoy to Niger Robert Fowler and his assistant, former Canada’s ambassador in Gabon, Louis Guy, after a country in the African coast will release two of its elements and fellows who were arrested there, without mentioning the name of this country. 

• French press quoted from a Malian source linked to the file, “Requirements of the Canadian diplomats’ release were sent to the Canadian authorities in order to find a solution, while information about Ottawa’s reply is still unknown, because it is monitoring the situation with the Malian government, which already succeeded in resolving the problem of the two Austrian hostages, Wolfgang Ibner and Andrea Kloiber, who were kidnapped by the same terrorist group last year”.
• Demands by the Salafist Group have been first announced since the two Canadian diplomats kidnapping last 14 December, and the two European tourists in the last January 22, with the group’s publication of the hostages’ pictures, in an attempt to confirm that things announced by the co called “Salah Abou Mohamed”, spokesman of the terrorist organization, last Tuesday were real.
• An American Centre, specialized in controlling the websites which belong to terrorist groups, reported that the Salafist Group has published pictures of four people, claiming that they are the four European hostages which were kidnapped last January, including a Swiss couple Werner Grainger and Gabriela Breco Grainger, and the German Marian Pitsuld, as well as the British Edwin Dyer.
• The first picture, which appeared in the salafist group’s website, showed a man sitting under a desert tree and behind him armed people wearing desert clothing, believed to be the British tourist. The second picture showed a tired man next to him a woman believed to be the Swiss couple. The third picture showed a woman whose head was covered by a piece od cloth believed to be the German tourist, however the Canadian diplomats’ pictures were not published in the website.
• Sources in the British Foreign Ministry said government is investigating in the kidnapping of its citizen in the Nigerian and Malian borders, based on the pictures on the terrorist group’s website.