MALI: SA Hostage Is Alive And In Good Spirits

Bamako – A Malian investment consultant who volunteered to help secure the release of hostage Stephen McGown says he has obtained reliable news that the South African is “alive and in good condition”.

Speaking at his mother’s home in Mali’s capital Bamako, Mohamed Yehia Dicko said he had “made big progress” and was looking forward to returning to South Africa this weekend to brief Gift of the Givers head Imtiaz Sooliman.

“We made big progress. I made use of my own Tuareg contact in northern Mali. That one sent me to Niger. There, I got confirmation that McGowan and the Swedish hostage (Johan Gustafson) are alive and in good condition. We are trying to build the link,” said Dicko, 48, who lives in Bedfordview, Johannesburg, and arrived in Mali on July 9.

Gustafson and McGown have been held captive in northern Mali since being abducted in Timbuktu in November 2011. In June, both appeared in a YouTube video posted online by their captors, and appealed to their respective governments to help secure their release.

It is not known exactly which group is holding them – al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or a more recent offshoot of that group.

Dicko, who has lived in South Africa for 13 years where he works as a consultant for companies, such as mining firms wanting to invest in Mali, said he had not been in touch with the South African embassy in Mali, nor with the governments of Mali or Niger.

However, being a native of Gao – a city on the edge of the desert whose main economic activity is trafficking – it is credible to believe that he should be able to make contact with influential northern Malian business, religious, and tribal leaders.

“We are going our own way,” he said, adding that his contacts were Tuareg “though not necessarily from the same tribe that is holding them. They could even be with Arabs. I do not know”.

Asked if his contact in Niger was mining magnate Mohamed Akotey – who played a key role in negotiating the release of the last French hostage in the Sahel, Serge Lazarevic, in December last year – Dicko claimed not to know him.

But he indicated that he believed his new-found contacts in Niger, and possibly the government there, would be able to work “faster” than contacts in Mali.

Dicko said he did not know where the hostages were being held and ‘had not got to the stage’ of hearing any demands from those holding the men.

“We do not know what the process will be. We are not at the stage of hearing the demands yet,” he said.

Dicko is vice-president of the Malian diaspora association in South Africa and volunteered his services a month ago when he heard Sooliman appeal on Radio 702 for help to bring McGowan home.

Sooliman has claimed that a 2005 Gift of the Givers intervention in support of famine needs in Niger might give the charity leverage at government level in that country. However, Dicko is emphatic that he has used his own contacts.

Gift of the Givers’ initiative is a first in the Sahel where hostages in the past have either been released as a result of mediation through intermediaries chosen by governments or mining firms, or as a result of military operations.

Lazarevic’s release on December 9 last year was surrounded by extreme secrecy, a rumoured ransom payment, and the release from prisons in the region of at least two suspected terrorists.

French military operations in northern Mali have also resulted in lucky releases. This was the case when French special forces came across Dutch hostage Sjaak Rijke during an offensive in northern Mali on April 5, 2015.

A year earlier, five Malian Red Cross workers were released from captivity during a French military operation near Timbuktu.