Militant Group Says It Has Romanian Hostage

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/world/middleeast/militant-group-says-it-has-romanian-hostage.html

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A jihadist group that is based in the Sahara and was once a part of Al Qaeda’s global network announced that it was holding a Romanian hostage, just five days after it pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

The statement raised fears that the hostage, a former security guard, could face the same fate as six Western captives who were decapitated by the Islamic State or its official branches.

In the statement, which appeared Monday on the website of Al Akhbar, a Mauritanian news portal that has previously carried jihadist messages, the leader of the extremist group Al Mourabitoun warned that the Romanian government would have blood on its hands if it failed to heed the group’s demands.

“The Romanian government will be fully responsible for the fate of its hostage if it delays in seizing the opportunity offered to it to release its citizen,” said the statement signed by the group’s emir, Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, according to a translation provided by SITE Intelligence, an online organization that tracks extremist propaganda. The Romanian citizen, whose name has not been disclosed, was abducted on April 4 at a manganese mine in Burkina Faso, where he worked as a security agent. Witnesses saw him being driven in the direction of Mali’s lawless desert, according to the local news media.

Northern Mali’s rocky expanses and rolling dunes have long been home to Al Qaeda’s North African branch, of which Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, a nom de guerre, was once a member.

He and others split off several years ago to create a different terrorist cell, known as the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or Mujao, which in 2012 seized part of northern Mali, before being pushed back by a French-led military operation in 2013. That year, Mujao joined other jihadists in the region to form Al Mourabitoun.