Financing Terror
"Kidnapping for ransom has become today's most significant source of terrorist financing. Each transaction encourages another transaction."
David S. Cohen, U.S. Treasury Department, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, 2012 speech
"The Europeans have a lot to answer for. It's a completely two-faced policy. They pay ransoms and then deny any was paid."
"The danger of this is not just that it grows the terrorist movement but that it makes all our citizens more vulnerable."
Vicki Huddleston, former U.S. State Department official
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| French president Francois Hollande and former French hostages, Marc Feret, Pierre Legrand, Daniel Laribe and Thierry Dol |
When it was still the G8, before Vladimir Putin was uninvited to represent as one of the members of that global community, British Prime Minister David Cameron at the final meeting, sought a declaration banning the payment of ransoms to secure the release of abductees taken by terrorist jihadis in a highly successful bid to raise funding to pay for their activities.
In Northern Ireland, at a 2012 meeting, some of the very countries seen now to be responsible for the biggest ransom payouts agreed that the practise was counter-productively repugnant. It took only a few months afterward before the French foreign minister and the defence minister welcomed four French hostages kidnapped in Niger, freed after three years in captivity.
Such foreign captives of Islamist terrorist groups are not maintained in good health out of the goodness of their hearts. The goal is to take possession of a westerner and then bargain with their country of origin for a ransom amount sufficient to make their efforts worthwhile. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was paid roughly $1.1-million to secure the release of Robert Fowler and Louis Guay two Canadian diplomats kidnapped in Mali in 2008.
Official Canada denied having paid any ransom to effect the release of the two men who were on a visit to a Canadian mining company operating out of Mali when their vehicle was stopped and they were detained indefinitely by AQIM in expectation of enriching themselves before permitting the two men to return to Canada. The U.S. Treasury Department figures that al-Qaeda raised $165-million by this scheme in the last six years.
Western countries who are the partial target of terrorist groups are helping to bankroll their activities. Mostly, it is European countries willing to redeem kidnapped nationals for however much their kidnappers demand for their release. Although they deny paying ransoms, it has been revealed by an investigative journalist, his report recently published in The New York Times, that from Mali to Syria ransoms valued at $135-million have been paid out since 2008.
Over half that total, amounting to about $66-million, was surrendered in the past year alone. Further revealing is the fact that over half of such payments were related to French hostages, while German, Italian and Swiss had also arranged payments for the release of their nationals from the hands of jihadists. The two countries which steadfastly refuse to pay ransoms are Britain and the United States.
According to Pauline Neville-Jones, a former United Kingdom security minister and adviser to British Prime Minister Cameron, jihadists had used the money they extracted as ransom in the release of abductees, to expand their territory across Africa and the Middle East. "Crime and terrorism seem closely connected. The unwisdom of paying ransom is being shown in spades."
Relatives of dead kidnap victims are decidedly unhappy at the news that some European countries regularly pay out ransoms. Brother of murdered British hostage Edwin Dyer, Hans, declared his brother's British passport to have represented a "death certificate", once the Foreign Office informed his captors the country's administration had no intention of ever paying a ransom. Edwin Dyer was killed weeks later after Britain rejected an AQIM deadline for payment.
"The British wanted me to send a message saying one last time that they wouldn't pay", said the go-between negotiator located in Burkina Faso. "I warned them, 'Don't do this'. They sent the message anyway." The kidnappers, whose leader was a Timbuktu warlord named Abu Zaid, informed that Britain would not pay for the man's freedom, killed him while a German man and a Swiss couple captured alongside Mr. Dyer, were released when an eight-million euros ransom was paid.
Labels: Jihadis, Middle East, North Africa
posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 01, 2014
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