A former U.S. ambassador to Mali has alleged that France paid a $17 million ransom to free hostages seized from a French mining site – cash she said ultimately funded the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants its troops are now fighting. French officials, whose soldiers are pushing north into the territory where the missing captives are believed to be held, denied paying any ransoms.
Huddleston, who served as ambassador to Mali and held positions in the State Department and Defense Department in the U.S. before retiring, told France’s iTele network that the French money allowed al-Qaeda’s North Africa branch to flourish in Mali.
Huddleston, the US ambassador to Mali from 2002-05, said Germany, other European countries (with the exception of Britain) and Canada had also paid ransoms which have served to finance the armed Islamist groups which last year seized control of northern Mali.
She said a total of as much as $89 million could have been paid out between 2004-11, but since it was paid through intermediaries including the Malian army, it was unclear how much would have reached Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its allies.
“Although governments deny that they’re paying ransoms, everyone is pretty much aware that money has passed hands indirectly through different accounts and it ends up in the treasury, let us say, of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and allows them to buy weapons and recruit,” she said in the comments that aired Friday.
France’s policy of paying ransoms under Hollande’s predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy was well documented by journalists, an open secret in diplomatic circles, and a source of friction with Algeria, Britain and the United States, all of whom opposed the policy.
Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College, said a French policy of paying for hostages through middlemen has been clear for years and has broad support from a public that sees near daily references to the hostages on television and in print.
“There is a political consensus that is being built subtly. Every single day you are reminded that you have nationals somewhere,” Ranstorp said. “It’s through several middlemen. It’s almost a normal business transaction.”
The primary drawback as far as France is concerned, he said, “is a security cost because wherever French people go they become prey.”
Huddleston said the $17 million payment was intended to win freedom for the hostages kidnapped in September 2010 from their guarded villas in the Niger town of Arlit, where they were working with French nuclear company Areva.
“France paid ransom for the release of these hostages,” Huddleston said.
Claude Gueant, who was French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s chief of staff at the time, on Friday denied that France had ever paid a ransom and said intermediaries had been negotiating to free the hostages. Philippe Lalliot, the current spokesman for the foreign ministry, dismissed Huddleston’s comments as based on “rumor.”
http://www.thelocal.fr/page/view/france-paid-ransoms-to-al-qaeda-linked-mali-foes#.URcWGY52Kw5
