Three European aid workers released in Mali after being kidnapped by an Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group were on Thursday “safe and sound” in neighbouring Burkina Faso, a negotiator said.
“We are in Gorom-Gorom (a town in northern Burkina Faso). We have all the hostages,” the negotiator said, adding that the two Spaniards and one Italian snatched in Algeria in October 2011 were “safe and sound… everyone is well”.
The group would arrive in Ouagadougou later in the day.
A leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) on Wednesday announced the hostages’ release.
He said a ransom had been paid for the three — a Spanish man and woman, Enric Gonyalons and Ainhoa Fernandez Rincon, and an Italian woman, Rossella Urru.
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 previously unknown group MUJAO claimed responsibility, saying it was an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
The group in May demanded the release of two Sahrawis arrested by Mauritania for their role in the kidnapping, as well as 30 million euros ($37 million) for the hostages’ freedom, threatening to kill the Spanish man if their demands were not met.
In Nouakchott, online news agency Alakhbar reported that among Islamist prisoners exchanged for the hostages was a Sahrawi called Memine Ould Oufkir, one of those arrested in the wake of the kidnapping.
MUJAO last week said last week it had freed three of seven Algerian diplomats kidnapped during the Islamist seizure of the northern Mali city of Gao in late March.
No further details were given on a ransom or the identity of those freed.
MUJAO, along with Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) and a Tuareg rebel group, overran northern Mali in the chaos that followed a March 22 coup in the southern capital of Bamako.
However 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 is holding the city of Gao while Ansar Dine has exerted its control in Timbuktu, whipping unmarried couples, smokers and drinkers and destroying ancient World Heritage shrines it considers idolatrous.
Both Islamist groups have stated ties to AQIM and other jihadist groups on the continent, raising fears that the vast region could become a safe haven for extremist groups.
AQIM has for years carried out attacks, kidnapped foreigners and been involved in drug and human trafficking in the Sahel.
The group is currently holding six French hostages — two geologists kidnapped last November in northern Mali and four kidnapped in September 2010 from Niger.
They also have Swedish, Dutch and South African hostages taken last November in an attack on Timbuktu in which a German was killed.
