Niger: a Sahel country bumping along (catch all)

[Rex Brynen]

Few clues surrounding diplomats’ disappearance in Niger
Steven Edwards, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, December 16, 2008

UNITED NATIONS -- Suspects holding veteran Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler and his aide were feared Tuesday to be scanning world reports about the pair to assess how "valuable" they might be.

One insider speculated the kidnappers -- depending on their identity and their goals -- may feel they have hit a "jackpot" given some of the publicly available accounts of Fowler's career.

Fowler is a former deputy minister in the Defence Department and was Canada's longest serving ambassador to the UN.

[Rex Brynen]

UN working to find Niger envoy

BBC News, 24 December 2008

The UN says it is working with Canada, as well as Niger and others in West Africa to help secure the release of a kidnapped UN special envoy to Niger.

A spokeswoman said the UN was pursuing all appropriate channels to secure the safe return of former Canadian ambassador to the UN, Robert Fowler.

The UN said he went missing in Niger on 15 December while on official business.

[Rex Brynen]

Sadly, still no news on Bob.

Abducted without a trace

GEOFFREY YORK
Globe and Mail Update
January 24, 2009 at 1:04 AM EST

Mr. Fowler, 64, was one of Ottawa's most powerful bureaucrats before his retirement. He had served as an ambassador to the United Nations, a deputy minister of defence, a top adviser to a string of prime ministers and a veteran of war zones from Rwanda to Darfur. Yet this time he may have ventured a step too far.

The tale of the vanished Canadians has all the elements of a Graham Greene thriller: the secretive diplomats who concealed their true mission, their mysterious disappearance in an obscure African country, the intricate games of the rebels and the government and the foreign investigators who are struggling to understand it all.

But if this is a Graham Greene mystery, it has a 21st-century twist: The Islamic radicals with ties to al-Qaeda who investigators believe may now be holding the diplomats. The radicals have emerged as a growing power in North Africa and now seem to be expanding into countries such as Mali and Niger — a vast new territory for their ambitions.

[Rex Brynen]

Video suggests diplomats in clutches of al-Qaeda

GEOFFREY YORK
From Monday's Globe and Mail
February 9, 2009 at 4:13 AM EST

JOHANNESBURG — One of the kidnapped Canadians seems exhausted. The other is still clutching his briefcase. Standing behind them are armed men, posing for the camera - the trademark of the al-Qaeda terrorist group.

This is the latest description of a videotape that apparently shows the disturbing fate of Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, the two Canadian diplomats who were kidnapped in December in the West African nation of Niger.

...

The video adds further evidence to the theory of al-Qaeda involvement in the kidnapping. The leading theory among the investigators - including Canadian, American and United Nations security specialists - is that the two Canadian diplomats are being held by a cell of al-Qaeda's branch in North Africa, which is already suspected of masterminding a series of similar kidnappings of Western tourists in Mali, Algeria and Tunisia.

[Rex Brynen]

Al-Qaida N. Africa claims 6 hostages

UPI, Published: Feb. 19, 2009 at 1:03 PM

NIAMEY, Niger, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida's North Africa branch claims it is holding hostage a Canadian U.N. peace envoy, his aide and four tourists who were kidnapped in the Sahara.

A spokesman for al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian group that claims to have joined Osama bin Laden's terror network in 2006 but some say has simply adopted the name, threatened "to deal with the six kidnapped according to Islamic Shariah law," an audio recording played on pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera said.

[Rex Brynen]

I never did update this thread.

Bob Fowler was, happily, freed in June. As has subsequently been reported in the press, the JTF2 guys were considering a rescue operation if they had received a more accurate fix on AQIM's whereabouts.

In his most recent comments to the CBC, Bob has suggested that his itinerary was leaked to AQIM by a source within the government of Niger or the UN.

[Rex Brynen]

The secret Mali deal to release two Canadians

Four al-Qaeda members were freed from prison in exchange for diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay

Geoffrey York
Bamako, Mali — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009 1:45PM EDT
Last updated on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009 8:45PM EDT

Four terrorists, including a bomb-maker, were released from prison in the African nation of Mali in exchange for the freedom this year of Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, high-ranking government sources in Mali have confirmed.

The released prisoners were members of al-Qaeda’s increasingly powerful branch in the Sahara region of northern and western Africa. Two of them had been arrested in the northern Mali desert town of Gao last year after an accidental explosion while they were manufacturing a bomb, the sources say.

It was widely suspected that there was much more to the release than was initially reported. As you'll see from the full report, the UK government was said to be quite unhappy with Canada's actions in this case (as they were also trying to secure the release of a hostage), as were the Algerians (the primary target of AQIM attacks).