Mali conflict: French ransom cash 'funded militants'

A former US ambassador to Mali has told the BBC that France that paid ransom money to free hostages and the funds ended up bolstering Islamist groups it is now fighting.

Vicki Huddleston said France paid $17m (£10.75m) to free hostages seized from a uranium mine in Niger in 2010.

She said other European countries, including Germany, had also paid ransoms amounting to nearly $90m.

Ms Huddleston said the hostages kidnapped at the Niger mine in 2010 were only released because money had changed hands.

"All the European countries who paid ransoms have denied that they paid ransoms and you know perhaps they can deny it because it's gone indirectly through various channels in the Malian government," she told the BBC's Newshour programme.

"When I was in Mali I actually knew, he was the Governor of Gao, who's now deceased, and he was one of the negotiators with the AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb)."

Al-Qaeda branches, she added, are "not releasing the Western hostages out of the goodness of their hearts".

Be sure to pass this onto every filthy koranimal sympathizer that you may know:

Two Qatari aircrafts come to the rescue of the Jihadists in Mali

Two Qatari aircrafts come to the rescue of the Jihadists in Mali
Posted on February 8, 2013 by Eeyore
Original translation by Oz-Rita

H/T Magic Martin
From This Site:

We have received information of a landing of two Qatar aircrafts in the north of Mali “to transport Jihadists and to save them from being arrested or killed by the French and Malian armies.”

This operation, which is starting to be known in informed circles, would explain partially why the bosses of AlQueda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and of the Movement for unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) have still not been arrested, several weeks after the start of the French military offensive and the capture of several Mali towns, among them Kidal, Timbuktu, Monti and Gao.

“This information has only recently started to circulate”, said Eric Denece, director of the French centre for research in information (CF2R).

Let us remind you that Qatar who has, until now, not denied this information, spoke out against the French military intervention in Mali, after having proposed to facilitate the mediation with the armed jihadists in the north of the country.

We also remind you that the presence of four Qatari humanitarians had been detected in the North of Mali. This has been confirmed (to us) by Mickael Sibdiga, leader of the Red Cross in Kidal.

These four Qatari “humanitarians”, according to a local Malien source, had arrived unofficially, i.e. without informing the international committee of the Red Cross. “They said that they had come to evaluate the needs of the population”, Mickael Sibdiga added.

The Qatar is suspected to support and to finance the Jihadists who were striking (hitting) in the North of Mali and in other regions of the world.

http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=59390

It’s pass time to do what’s right.

Thanks Pan_Yan.

Mali's borders, original constitution, and official language are all inherited from its former avaricious French colonial masters. Its cumbersome colonial-era boundaries -- resembling two large triangles stuck hastily together with a thin strip of land in the middle -- has proven particularly significant during the recent conflict. 90% percent of the population resides in the southern triangle, whose crops feed the whole country, while the northern triangle, which accounts for two-thirds of Mali's territory, consists almost entirely of sparsely populated desert. Mali's political and economic structures were also built using models left by the French colonial administration; they were not designed to benefit the Malian people, and the economic situation is liable to collapse at any time. -- Mali's Model Democracy Myth by Joe Penney The Palais des Congres in Bamako, Mali. Photograph by Robin Taylor.

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