Libya: Kidnapped Maltese oil worker released unharmed

A Maltese oil worker abducted by a Libyan militia on 17 July was released unharmed yesterday. According to a report, 42 year old Martin Galea has already flown back to Malta after eleven days in captivity.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat welcomed the retired armed forces captain on the tarmac at Malta airport and thanked the diplomatic service, the army and the Muslim community in Malta for helping secure his release.

Galea is an employee of Arab Geophysical Exploration Services and was abducted from the suburbs of Tripoli while he was being driven to work.

The Maltese government said that no ransom was paid for Galea's release and that it was too early to say who had abducted him or why. Given the increased spate of kidnappings by criminal gangs, however, the motivations are just as likely to have been financial rather than ideological.

Although he did not elaborate, Galea said the Maltese consul in Tripoli, Marisa Farrugia, had saved his life. A Maltese government official stated "We will fill in the blanks only after the Security Service has spoken to him. So far what we know for a fact is that he has been released and that was our priority.”

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Nigeria moving closer to locating kidnapped schoolgirls.

The Nigerian authorities claim that they are "moving closer" to locating the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls, as other kidnapped women and children escape from Boko Haram.

Last week, Sid Djinnit, the regional UN representative in Dakar, told the Security Council that escalating violence against civilians is both harming Nigeria and affecting regional security, and that there have been around 18 attacks attributed to Boko Haram in the preceding two weeks. Despite this, the government continues to claim progress against the insurgents.

The military claims, for example, that it is moving closer to rescuing the Chibok schoolgirls after a wave of recent arrests that were reported to the recent National Council of State meeting in Abuja. One military spokesman claimed at the weekend that over 50 Boko Haram members were killed by its forces at its Damboa military base in Bornu State which was actually attacked by the insurgents.

In addition, there have been reports that some women and children who were kidnapped last month have escaped. Some are being treated at an Adamawa State hospital while others escaped from Boko Haram while the latter’s forces were attacking the Damboa military base.

Boko Haram leaders and their claimed associates continue to suggest negotiations over the kidnapped girls. A Boko Haram spiritual teacher said earlier this week that the Chibok girls who were kidnapped in April are in good health, even voluntarily converting to Islam: he called for Boko Haram prisoners to be released as part of negotiations.

The US' FBI claims that proceeds from Niger Delta kidnappings may have been used to fund Boko Haram's activities and have reached the group via several intermediaries. A private intelligence company, Modern Security Consulting Group, cites evidence from Nigerian insiders that Boko Haram may provide support for kidnappings, perhaps assisting pirates in moving money or acquiring weapons.

This raises the prospect of security worsening in the Niger Delta ahead of the February 2015 elections, where there is likely to be a fierce electoral contest between the ruling PDP and opposition All Progressives' Congress.

Oil industry executives are often the target of Niger Delta kidnappings but earlier this week, Golden Chioma - a member of the Rivers State House of Assembly who chairs the Rivers State House Committee on Judiciary - was allegedly kidnapped by unidentified gunmen.

For more news and expert analysis about Nigeria or East Africa, please see Nigeria Focus and Nigeria Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

More than 150 Syrian students kidnapped by ISIS

The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) has allegedly abducted between 153 and 186 boys aged 13-16 in the Aleppo region of northern Syria. Although largely unreported by conventional media outlets, bar brief reports in The Guardian and VICE News, it appears that ISIS has perhaps been influenced by Boko Haram’s April kidnapping of more than 300 schoolgirls from Chibok in north-east Nigeria.

Reports have recently surfaced that on 29 May 2014 a convoy of ten minibuses successfully completed the perilous 110 km journey from Ain al-`Arab (Kobani in Kurdish), on the Turkish border, to Aleppo to sit their end-of-year-exams as required by Syria’s educational system. The returning convoy was intercepted and redirected to an ISIS-controlled Islamic school in Minbej, just 66 km from Kobani, where the vast majority of the boys have remained. The primary source of what has been reported is Mustafa Hussan, one of five boys who managed to escape four days after the initial abduction. 

Hussan reports that, although the food was good, many boys were beaten by their international ISIS captors: ‘I saw a lot of Russians, Chechens, Libyans, some Saudi Arabians and Syrians too.’ Forced to undergo lessons in Islamic Shar’ia ideology and training in jihad, the boys were threatened with beheading if they attempted to escape. In spite of this, Hussan and four fellow students managed to escape via a roof under the pretence of raising a flag while their classmates distracted their religious teacher. Hassan stated that once they had escaped they were aided in their journey home by sympathetic locals.

Since their escape, unconfirmed rumours have surfaced that a further 15 students were traded for three ISIS combatants being held by Kurdish forces. What is certain, however, is that the longer the situation remains, the more difficult it will be to extract the students. Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has pledged its support to Kobani but the situation is complicated by the fact that ISIS has been carrying out deadly attacks on the city and surrounding villages since 2 July with weapons captured in Mosul. One attack, at Sheyoh, saw the execution of 24 Kurds, including two children.

Within the majority Kurdish city there is little faith that anyone outside of Kobani will help. According to a 2013 estimate by the Syrian Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), over 85% of the total population of 44, 821 is Kurdish, with small Arab (5%), Turkomen ( 5%) and Armenian (1%) minorities.  The city itself is accustomed to both violence and its status as a minority stronghold. Founded in 1915 by Armenians fleeing genocide in Anatolia, who mostly emigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1960s, part of the city fell foul of the demarcation of the Syrian and Turkish border and has been assimilated into the Turkish city of Suruç. 

The vast majority of Kurds, following the principal of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, supported Syria’s minority Shi’a Alawite regime, believing that if the country were governed by the majority Sunni populace the Kurds would themselves be further ostracised and persecuted. In addition to what is taking place in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, which is proving a stumbling block to ISIS’ unrealistic attempts to form an Islamic Caliphate stretching from the Gulf to the Atlantic, the Syrian Kurdish allegiance to the regime has seen them become a target for sustained siege and, now, kidnapping and executions.

While the precise facts of what has happened remain unverified, what has crystallised is ISIS’ willingness to kidnap and enlist children in armed conflict, considered war crimes under International Humanitarian Law, to achieve its aims.

For more news and expert analysis about Iraq, please see Iraq Focus.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Yemen: A plague of kidnappings

On 10 January, Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula released Yolande Korkie, a South African it had held since May 2013, but only to facilitate demands for a ransom of $3 million for her husband, Pierre. Both are teachers working with a South African charity, Gift for Givers Foundation, which had been in touch with the kidnappers for some time to try to arrange their release.

Korkie explained that they had failed to persuade the kidnappers that their families were too poor to pay such a sum. AQAP suggested they ask Qatar or another government to intervene, perhaps hoping for a repeat of the part played by Oman in arranging freedom for two Finns and an Austrian last year (for what was said to be a very large ransom).

Gift of the Givers was given three weeks to come up with the money but said in early February that it had lost contact with the kidnappers shortly before the deadline expired, though it later received assurances that Pierre was alive and would not be executed. The couple had been in Yemen for four years and must have been aware of the risks they were running.

The UN Security Council has again called in governments and other organisations not to agree to ransom demands from kidnappers as the money is used to finance terrorism and encourages the further use of this form of extortion.

A German in his 60s studying Arabic was taken in central Sana’a on 31 January but apparently by tribesmen from Marib in dispute with the government. He should eventually be released unless the kidnappers sell him on to AQAP. A British oil worker was kidnapped on 3 February along with two Yemenis outside a supermarket at Hadda in Sana’a. Nothing is known of the motive, nor has there been any news.

An Iranian commercial attaché was killed in early January as he was leaving the residence of the Iranian ambassador in what appeared to be a bungled kidnap attempt. Another Iranian diplomat taken several months ago is still being held but the Tehran government says that he is in good health – contrary to reports that his body had been found in Marib. AQAP is also still holding the Saudi consul in Aden and there may be at least one other western hostage whose name (and even news of his kidnapping) has not been made public.

For more news and expert analysis about Yemen, please see Yemen Focus.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Libya: Son of Benghazi's Special Forces head kidnapped

Ali Ouanis Bukhamada, the son of the head of Special Forces in Benghazi, Ouanis Bukhamada, was kidnapped last week from outside a restaurant behind Benghazi University. Two cars blocked the young man’s way and unknown men forced him inside one of the vehicles and drove him away.

It is not clear exactly who took the young Bukhamada but it is widely believed to be the work of an Islamist militia or group operating in the country’s second city. The Special Forces chief declared, “This is an attempt to blackmail me or to pressurise me so as to hinder us from imposing security and stability.”

According to some rumours, Ali Ouanis Bukhamada’s kidnappers demanded that Special Forces pull out of the Islamist-dominated Qawarsha neighbourhood in return for the young man’s release. Bukhamada denied these rumours and asserted, “I don’t have any forces in Qawarsha. I don’t know what they want. Let them tell us and I am quite open to them.” Other reports circulating on the internet and on social networking sites have claimed that the young man has already been killed by his abductors.

Ali Ouanis’s abduction was followed by a number of clashes between Special Forces and militant groups. One such clash occurred at a farm in Qawarsha, located on the western outskirts of Benghazi, where armed gunmen had holed themselves up and had opened fire on a helicopter engaged in a combing operation. Special Forces troops moved in on the farm, putting the area under siege and closing all the main roads that lead to it. The ensuing clashes left one soldier dead and four others injured.

In a show of support, Justice Minister Salah Al-Marghani flew to Benghazi after Ali Ouanis’s kidnap to meet his father. There is, however, little hope that the young man’s captors will be brought to justice. Going by what has happened to other kidnap victims in the city, there is limited hope too that Bukhamada will be found alive.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security. 

© 2014 Menas Associates