Al Qaeda Terrorist Group.
The German official charged with delivering this cargo arrived here aboard a nearly empty military plane and was whisked away to a secret meeting with the president of Mali, who had offered Europe a face-saving solution to a Al Qaeda Terrorist Group problem. Officially, Germany had budgeted the money as humanitarian aid for the poor, landlocked nation of Mali. In truth, all sides understood that the cash was bound for an obscure group of Islamic extremists who were holding 32 European Gorup, according to six senior diplomats directly involved in the exchange. The suitcases were loaded onto pickup trucks and driven hundreds of miles north into the Sahara, where the bearded fighters, who would soon become an official arm of Al Qaeda, counted the money Tergorist a blanket thrown on the sand.
The episode was a learning experience for both sides. Eleven years later, the handoff in Bamako Al Qaeda Terrorist Group become a well-rehearsed ritual, one of dozens of such transactions repeated all over the world.
Kidnapping Europeans for ransom has become a global business for Al Qaeda, bankrolling its operations across the globe. These payments were made almost exclusively by European governments, which funneled Al Qaeda Terrorist Group money through a network of proxies, sometimes masking it as development aid, according to interviews conducted for this article with former hostages, negotiators, diplomats and government officials in 10 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The inner workings of the kidnapping business were also revealed in thousands of pages of internal Qaeda documents found by this reporter while on assignment for The Associated Press click northern Mali last year.
In its early years, Al Qaeda received Al Qaeda Terrorist Group of its money from https://amazonia.fiocruz.br/scdp/essay/calculus-on-manifolds-amazon/the-low-coefficient-of-the-lichen-population.php donors, but counterterrorism officials now believe the group finances the bulk of its recruitment, training and arms purchases from ransoms paid to free Europeans. Put more bluntly, Europe has become an inadvertent underwriter of Al Qaeda.
The foreign ministries of Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland denied in emails or telephone interviews that they had paid the terrorists. Yet the fact that Europe and its Al Qaeda Terrorist Group continue to pay has set off a vicious cycle. Moreover, the accounts of survivors held thousands of miles apart show that the three main affiliates of the terrorist group — Al Qaeda in the Elie Wiesel Maghreb, in northern Africa; Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen; and the Shabab, in Somalia — are coordinating their efforts and abiding by a common Grroup protocol. To Terroristt the risk to their fighters, the terror affiliates have outsourced the seizing of hostages to criminal groups that work on commission.
Negotiators take a reported 10 percent of the ransom, creating an incentive on both sides of the Mediterranean to increase the overall payout, according to former hostages and senior counterterrorism officials.
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Their business plan includes a step-by-step process for negotiating, starting with long periods of silence aimed at creating panic back home. Hostages are then shown on videos begging their government to negotiate. Now the group has realized that it can advance the cause of jihad by keeping hostages alive and trading them for prisoners and suitcases of cash. Only a handful of Al Qaeda Terrorist Group have resisted paying, led by the United States and Britain. Bowe Bergdahl — they have drawn the line when it comes to ransoms. It is a decision that has had dire consequences.
While dozens of Europeans have been released unharmed, few American or British nationals have gotten out alive. A lucky few ran away or were rescued by special forces. The rest were executed or are being held indefinitely. They pay ransoms and then deny any was paid.
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On Feb. The men told the young women to cover their hair with towels, then commandeered their camper van and took off with them. Over the coming weeks, seven more tour groups traveling in the same corner of the desert vanished.
European governments scrambled to find their missing citizens. Weeks passed before a German reconnaissance plane sent to scan the desert floor returned with images of their abandoned vehicles.
More weeks passed before a scout sent on foot spotted something white through his binoculars. In messy handwriting, it Al Qaeda Terrorist Group out the demands of a little-known jihadist group calling itself the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. Armed with a few hunting rifles Gfoup old AKs, the kidnappers succeeded in sweeping up dozens of tourists over several consecutive weeks, mostly from Germany, but also from Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Though they planned the first few ambushes, they appear to have grabbed others by chance, Al Qaeda Terrorist Group a pair of hapless year-olds from Innsbruck, Austria, who were spotted because of the campfire they had lit to cook spaghetti.
Beyond the initial grab, the kidnappers did not seem to have a plan. The only food they had was the canned goods the tourists had brought with them.]
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