Swiss hostage held by al Qaeda in Sahara freed-Mali
(Adds background, details)
BAMAKO, July 12 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's North African wing has freed a Swiss hostage it has been holding in the Sahara since January, a spokesman for Mali's president said on Sunday.
"We can confirm that the Swiss (hostage) has been freed," Seydou Cissouma, a spokesman for Mali's president, told Reuters without giving any further details of the release.
Werner Greiner was captured in late January with three other Westerners while attending a music festival near the Niger-Mali border. Two women in the group were later freed before Edwin Dyer, a British man, was killed in May.
Talks on Greiner's release had been on-going since the killing of the Briton. But they were taking place amid a series of clashes between the Malian security forces and the Islamists that killed dozens in the remote desert in the north of Mali.
The hostage-taking has brought into focus the threat posed by the North Africa branch of the global terror franchise, which is known as AQIM and has emerged out of the Algerian Islamist movement, the GSPC.
AQIM is operating across a vast stretch of weakly governed states where traffickers, rebels and bandits have long operated. Analysts say the threat posed by the group is based as much on a mix of criminality and opportunism as on hard-line Islamism. (Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Louise Ireland)
BAMAKO, July 12 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's North African wing has freed a Swiss hostage it has been holding in the Sahara since January, a spokesman for Mali's president said on Sunday.
"We can confirm that the Swiss (hostage) has been freed," Seydou Cissouma, a spokesman for Mali's president, told Reuters without giving any further details of the release.
Werner Greiner was captured in late January with three other Westerners while attending a music festival near the Niger-Mali border. Two women in the group were later freed before Edwin Dyer, a British man, was killed in May.
Talks on Greiner's release had been on-going since the killing of the Briton. But they were taking place amid a series of clashes between the Malian security forces and the Islamists that killed dozens in the remote desert in the north of Mali.
The hostage-taking has brought into focus the threat posed by the North Africa branch of the global terror franchise, which is known as AQIM and has emerged out of the Algerian Islamist movement, the GSPC.
AQIM is operating across a vast stretch of weakly governed states where traffickers, rebels and bandits have long operated. Analysts say the threat posed by the group is based as much on a mix of criminality and opportunism as on hard-line Islamism. (Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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