Some elements of al-Qaeda, pinched by a global crackdown on their finances, are turning to crime to raise money for their terror operations, a key Security Council diplomat said on Tuesday.
In one example an al-Qaeda affiliate in north Africa has staged kidnappings and then demanded ransom payments, said Chilean Ambassador Heraldo Munoz, who chairs the council committee monitoring UN sanctions.
A resolution approved by the Security Council within weeks of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US requires all 191 UN member-nations to freeze the assets of individuals and groups suspected of ties to al-Qaeda, block their movements and bar them from obtaining arms, funds or other resources.
The sanctions have sent terror groups scurrying to get around them. Raising cash through criminal acts appears to be one new approach, Munoz said.
He would not name the country where kidnappings have become a particular worry, but other council diplomats said it was Algeria, where the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and claimed responsibility for seizing 32 tourists in the desert last year.
US officials say the hard-line Islamic militant group is trying to recruit supporters in Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger to the south as well as in Algeria.
Washington is offering anti-terrorist training to the region's armies, seeing Africa as potentially fertile ground for terror networks due to its weak political institutions and poor policing of long coastlines and huge swathes of desert.
German newspapers have reported that the German government paid a ransom of about US$5 million to secure the release of one group of tourists nabbed in the desert, most of whom were German. Germany has declined to comment on the reports.
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