ABU DHABI Aug 22 (Reuters) – Three Western hostages seized
by al Qaeda militants in Mali last year have urged their
governments to negotiate their release, Al Jazeera television
reported, showing what it said was footage of the captives.
The three men appeared in good condition in the video
broadcast by Al Jazeera on Tuesday night and posted on its
website.
The hostages – Sjaak Rijke from the Netherlands, Stephen
Malcolm, who has dual South African and British citizenship, and
Sweden’s Johan Gustafsson – were seized on Nov. 25 while walking
along a street in the northern Malian town of Timbuktu. A fourth
person in the group was killed.
The kidnapping took place weeks before secular and Islamist
rebels, some with links to al Qaeda, took up arms against Mali’s
government. The insurgents later took advantage of the chaos
surrounding a March coup to take control of the country’s desert
north.
In the footage, Al Jazeera showed the three men arrive on
vehicles used by the militants, then walk around and sit down.
Their voices could not be heard, and appeared to have been
dubbed over with a reporter’s voice, quoting them as saying they
were being treated well and demanding their governments to
negotiate their release.
A still picture on the website of the Qatar-based satellite
network showed the three men, all sporting long beards and
wearing traditional clothes worn by local tribesmen, sitting on
rugs laid out in a desert hollow, surrounded by masked gunmen
dressed entirely in black.
In a video seen by Reuters in July, the three men appeared
before a flag similar to ones used by Islamist rebel group Ansar
Dine which, along with al Qaeda faction MUJWA, now controls
two-thirds of Mali’s desert north, territory that includes
Timbuktu.
Al Qaeda in North Africa said in December it had carried
out the kidnapping. It has also said it was holding six
Frenchmen – two abducted from their hotel in the northern Mali
town of Hombori in November, the other four kidnapped in
September 2010 in neighbouring Niger.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Thursday the
six were alive, but had been separated.
(Reporting By Raissa Kasolowsky; Editing by Sami Aboudi and
Alessandra Rizzo)
