In December 2008, I was making my third trip to Niger as the United Nations Special Envoy, attempting to broker a peace between the government and rebel Tuareg groups. One Sunday, two weeks before Christmas, my colleague, Louis Guay, and I were returning to the capital, Niamey, in a UN vehicle when a truck passed us, slewed in front and forced us to a stop.
Two AK-47s were aimed at the face of our driver, and within the blink on an eye all three of us were torn from our seats and thrown into the back of their truck. The whole grab took perhaps 40 seconds.
Thus began our 56-hour descent into hell, a 1,000 km off-road nightmare into the middle of the Sahara desert. Twelve hours into that appalling journey, we stopped for a couple of hours rest. As I paced back and forth, the sentry, a young Senegalese, looked up from where he was making tea and asked, “Have you figured out who we are yet?” Refusing to acknowledge the dawning reality, I shook my head and he spat “We are al-Qaeda,” enjoying the effect as the bottom fell out of my world.
Three days later, we were ushered toward a large, dark tent, and when I saw the assembled video equipment, I despaired at the thought of my family watching a You Tube video of our beheading. Instead, we recorded a message in which I stated that we had been captured by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and urged the UN and the government of Canada to bend every effort to secure our release and — as instructed — warned them to avoid violence in any effort to win our freedom.
My 130 days in the hands of al-Qaeda's African "monsters", by former hostage
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