Al Qaeda’s North Africa affiliate says it’s taken a Swiss missionary hostage.
Beatrice Stockly, who’d been kidnapped by Islamist militants once before in 2012, appeared Tuesday in a new video released by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
In the roughly eight-minute video, a masked man with a British accent demands that other prisoners be released in exchange for the missionary. Stockly appears wearing a hijab and says she was kidnapped by the group in Mali.
Earlier this month, the Swiss foreign ministry said it had learned of the kidnapping of a Swiss citizen in Mali and convened a task force to achieve her release.
Officials had advised her against returning to Mali after the 2012 kidnapping incident, the foreign ministry said.
In Tuesday’s video, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claims it also took her hostage in 2012. At the time of that kidnapping, media reports said Ansar Dine was the Islamist group holding Stockly hostage.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the terror group’s North African offshoot known as AQIM, has its roots in Algeria. It’s captured territory in Mali and taken hostages before — often Europeans — in countries such as Niger and Mauritania.
