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Security experts believe that AQIM's shift in tactics began in earnest with the December 2007 killing of four French tourists in Mauritania in what officials believe was a botched kidnapping. Successful abductions of Westerners then followed in Tunisia, Nigeria, Algeria and, most recently, in Mali, where French aid worker Pierre Camatte was snatched from his hotel on Nov. 25, and again in Mauritania, where three Spanish volunteers and an Italian couple were kidnapped on Nov. 29 and Dec. 19, respectively. (See pictures of a jihadist's journey...
AQIM had set a Jan. 31 deadline for Mali to release four of the group's imprisoned members in exchange for Camatte's freedom, but that date came and went with no action from the government, prompting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to make an urgent visit to the country on Tuesday to try to resolve the situation. Spain's El Mundo newspaper reported last month that AQIM wanted $7 million and the release of several other militants in exchange for freeing the three Spanish hostages, but Madrid has ruled out paying a ransom. According to an audiotape released...
Although obtaining money to fund its attacks against North African governments remains AQIM's main reason for kidnapping foreigners, analysts believe another motivation is terrorizing the West. A French foreign intelligence official tells TIME that militants executed a British hostage last May, for example, simply to horrify the world after efforts to secure a ransom reportedly failed. The man, Edwin Dyer, was abducted while traveling in Niger in January 2009, and in exchange for his freedom, AQIM demanded $14 million and the release of a radical cleric being held in a British prison. When Britain balked, Dyer was executed less...
...There's no way any Western government is going to pay that kind of money, or hand over a detainee of Abu Qatada's importance as a surrender to blackmail - quite clearly non-starters," says the French intelligence official, who requested anonymity while discussing matters related to terrorism. "Their intent was to assassinate Dyer from the start, and the entire bogus demand and deadline process was designed to prolong public anguish over Dyer, and maximize its horror when he was killed...
...arguments for its actions so local Muslim populations see kidnapping as part of the group's holy work, analysts say. "It's essential that jihadists believe they can credibly justify horrible criminal acts as righteous before they undertake them to both themselves, the victims and the world," says another French counter-terrorism official. "That has allowed AQIM to embrace something it had regarded as the lowly work of vulgar crooks and Mafia types before...