France24 - Bin Laden says France will pay a high price for its policies in Afghanistan

http://www.france24.com/en/20110121-bin-laden-warns-france-hostages-pay-policies-muslim-lands-sarkozy-afghanistan-niger

Bin Laden says France will pay a 'high price' for its policies in Afghanistan

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In a purported audio tape aired on Al Jazeera television on Friday, al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden warned French President Nicolas Sarkozy that his refusal to withdraw troops from Afghanistan was a "green light" to kill French hostages.

By Elena CASAS (video)
FRANCE 24 (text)

Who are al Qaeda’s French hostages? Intelligence agent Denis Allex (probably not his real name), was captured on 14 July 2009 in Somalia, possibly Mogadishu, by al Qaeda-linked militant group al Shabaab. Five French nationals, a Togolese and a Malagasy – most of them employees of energy group Areva – have been held hostage since 16 September 2010, when they were kidnapped at a uranium enrichment site in Arlit, north Niger. They’re being held somewhere in the Sahel, possibly in Mali, by the al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb movement (AQIM).

n a message specifically targeting France, al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden warned that Paris would pay a “high price” for its policies and that the fate of French hostages would depend on the pullout of French troops from “Muslim lands”, in a purported audiotape broadcast on Arabic news network Al Jazeera on Friday. “We repeat the same message to you: The release of your prisoners in the hands of our brothers is linked to the withdrawal of your soldiers from our country," bin Laden said. "The refusal of your president [Nicolas Sarkozy] to withdraw from Afghanistan is the result of his obedience of America an

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Russia, Turkey becoming strategic partners - Medvedev

clipped from en.rian.ru Russia and Turkey are becoming strategic partners, President Dmitry Medvedev said shortly before his visit to Ankara, due May 11-12. "June 3 will see 90 years since the day diplomatic relations between our countries were established, and my visit will take place shortly before that remarkable date," Medvedev said in an article for Turkish newspaper Zaman. "First of all, we can say with conviction that Russian-Turkish ties are reaching the level of full-scale strategic partnership," the Russian leader said, adding that a declaration signed by the two presidents in Moscow in February 2009 testified to that. He also said Russia sees Turkey as a "good and reliable neighbor with whom we are happy to jointly build plans to further strengthen cooperation for the good of our countries' peoples."

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Al-Qaida growing in strength and numbers in Africa

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clipped from news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON – Al-Qaida's terror network in North Africa is growing more active and attracting new recruits, threatening to further destabilize the continent's already vulnerable Sahara region, according to U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials. The North African faction, which calls itself Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is still small and largely isolated, numbering a couple hundred militants based mostly in the vast desert of northern Mali. But signs of stepped-up activity and the group's advancing potential for growth worry analysts familiar with the region. The Mali-based militants have yet to show a capability to launch such foreign attacks, but are widening their involvement in kidnapping and the narcotics trade, reaping profits that could be used to expand terror operations, officials and analysts said. "For too long, al-Qaida's growth in this critical region of Africa has been overlooked,"

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