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Four Frenchmen head home after three-year kidnap ordeal in Niger

The news of their release came days after regional security sources in the town of Gao in Mali reported the presence of envoys in the Sahel “to speed up negotiations towards freeing the French hostages”.

France had officially denied sending envoys.

According to a high ranking Nigerien source, the four were taken to Niamey by a French plane from Anefis, in northeastern Mali near the Algerian border.

That was the site of final negotiations which included Mohamed Akotey, a former Tuareg rebel who is a senior executive with an Areva subsidiary in Niger.

The hostages were apparently held in different locations to prevent them being freed in any French assault, and were brought together just days before the release.

A Malian security source also said that “the final negotiations took place in the Malian desert”, adding that “eminent Malians in the north provided timely assistance”.

Mali’s government welcomed the release but made no mention of any negotiations or whether it took part.

Three other people who were kidnapped at the time Francoise Larribe, a Togolese and a Madagascan were freed in February 2011.

AQIM had demanded at least 90 million euros ($124 million) for the release of the remaining hostages.

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At least seven French hostages remain in captivity around the world, including two snatched in Mali, one in Nigeria and four in Syria.

AQIM grew out of a movement launched in the late 1990s by radical Algerian Islamists who sought the overthrow of the Algiers government.

The organisation allied with Al-Qaeda in 2006 and has spun a network across tribal, clan, family and business lines that stretches across the vast Sahel region abutting the southern Sahara desert.

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