Malian militant group threatens European aid workers

Three European aid workers were released in Mali after being kidnapped by Malian militants A spokesperson for a Malian militant group has threatened to target European aid workers in the volatile region after three foreign nationals were released for a ransom of $18.4 million. The three European aid workers were released in Mali after being kidnapped by the Oneness and Jihad Movement in West Africa (MUJAO), an al-Qaeda-linked group. The hostages were freed in exchange for an Islamist prisoner and a ransom of €15 million ($18.4 million), said MUJAO spokesperson Walid Sahrawi.
"We got €15 million [$18.4 million] for the release of the three hostages and we also secured the release of the Jihadist Mamin Ould Afkeer [ a MUJAO fighter who was imprisoned in Mauritania] in return for freeing one Italian and two Spanish aid workers on Thursday," said Sahrawi.
The freed hostages - Spaniard Enric Gonyalons, his female compatriot Ainhoa Fernandez Rincon and Italian Rossella Urru - arrived on Thursday at the airport in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou. The three had arrived on a Burkinabe military plane sent to pick them up in the north Malian city of Gao. Then, accompanied by intelligence officials from their countries, they boarded two planes to go home.
MUJAO - a self-proclaimed offshoot of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) - claimed responsibility for kidnapping the aid workers in October 2011. The hostages were abducted from a Sahrawi refugee camp in Tindouf, Algeria, housing people from the disputed Western Saharan territory that abuts Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria.
The MUJAO spokesperson warned that his group will target all the European workers in Tendouf camps in the future.
In May MUJAO had demanded the release of two Sahrawis arrested by Mauritania for their role in the kidnapping, as well as €30m, threatening to kill the Spanish man if their demands were not met.
The region's Algerian-backed separatist guerrillas, the Polisario Front, welcomed the news of releasing the hostages claiming that the group had worked towards getting them freed.
MUJAO said last week it had freed three of seven Algerian diplomats kidnapped during the seizure of the north Malian city of Gao in late March. The militant group demanded €15 million from the Algerian government against the release of the remaining four hostages.
The group, along with the Islamist Ansar al-Dine (Defenders of Faith) and Tuareg separatist rebels, overran northern Mali in the chaos that followed a March 22 coup in the southern capital, Bamako.
But the jihadists have since forced the Tuareg fighters, who wanted an independent secular state, out of key positions as they seek to implement strict Islamic law.
MUJAO holds Gao, while Ansar al-Dine has exerted its control in Timbuktu.