By Raissa Kasolowsky and Kate Kelland
DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's North African wing said on Wednesday it had carried out its threat to kill a British hostage it was holding in the Sahara.
Britain said it had reason to believe the hostage, Edwin Dyer, had been killed and Prime Minister Gordon Brown condemned the killing as "a barbaric act of terrorism" and said the killers would be hunted down.
An official source in Algeria told Reuters: "The Briton, according to our information, has been killed by AQIM (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) in Mali."
The group had said it would kill the Briton if the British government did not release Abu Qatada, a Jordanian Islamist it is holding in prison.
Dyer was killed on May 31 after a second deadline for the group's demands expired, it said in a statement on a website used by al Qaeda-linked groups.
"The British captive was killed so that he, and with him the British state, may taste a tiny portion of what innocent Muslims taste every day at the hands of the Crusader and Jewish coalition to the east and to the west," the statement said.
The announcement of the killing came as U.S. President Barack Obama headed to the Middle East hoping to start mending U.S. ties with the Islamic world in a speech that will tackle issues including extremist violence.
"Al Qaeda's top messages are first, that a day before his expected speech to the Muslim world Obama must understand that al Qaeda is a force in the region that cannot be ignored," Hamid Ghomrassa, an expert in security issues who writes for Algeria's El Khabar newspaper, told Reuters.
"And second, that al Qaeda's threats should be taken seriously, and from now on the West should understand that paying ransoms to get back hostages is the only way to deal with (AQIM leader) Abdelmalek Droukdel," he said.
It was the first time AQIM has killed a hostage.
"This marks a big change. It will change a lot of things as this is the first time someone has actually been killed," said Jeremy Keenan, author of 'The Dark Sahara -- America's War On Terror In Africa'.
The British Foreign Office said Dyer was kidnapped on the border between Niger and Mali in late January, but declined to give any more details about him.
2 comments:
HUMAN SACRIFICE AND DEMONOLATRY IN ISLAM - Sacred ritual murder accompanied by chants of 'Allah Akhbar!' to propitiate the lunatic Mohammed's moon-demon.
Criminal religion ,accompanied by lunatic voices for 'jihad', in other words a fascistic reaction of
people in slavery, under the leading of the fanatic ayatollahs.
The rest of the people is still sleeping....
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