Al Qaeda Wants to Establish 7000 Km Wide African Caliphate - -Freed UN Envoy

Vanguard

12 March 2012

Al Qaeda Wants to Establish 7000 Km Wide African Caliphate - -Freed UN Envoy

By Uduma Kalu With Agency Report, 12 March 2012 Comment (1)

Lagos — A British victim and United Nations Special Envoy who spent 130 days in "the hands of al-Qaeda's African 'monsters'" in December 2008 in Nigeria has warned that the killing of British hostage, Chris McManus and his Italian counterpart in Sokoto last Thursday was a wake-up call to the threat posed by Islamic militants in Africa. He also said one of his captors was a Nigerian.

The former kidnap victim, Robert Fowler, in a report in Telegraph of London, yesterday, narrated how he was kidnapped as the United Nations Special Envoy, attempting to broker peace between the government and rebel Tuareg groups. Fowler said he was nabbed one Sunday, two weeks before Christmas, with his colleague, Louis Guay, on their way back to the capital, Niamey, in a UN vehicle.

"The objective of the group," he said, is to establish a 7,000 km wide caliphate, stretching from Nouakchott in Mauritania to Mogadishu in Somalia, to be ruled by stern Allah-fearing Islamic sages who could be relied upon to understand and execute God's will. AQIM believe that by replicating across the Sahel, the chaos and anarchy caused by their Al Shabaab colleagues in present day Somalia, they will be creating the perfect growth medium in which their vision will flourish.