An American missionary, tentatively identified by Christian groups as 50-year-old Kevin Rideout, was kidnapped from Niger’s capital city of Niamey by three unidentified gunmen on Tuesday.
Diplomatic sources said he was taken to the border with Mali, a region that serves as a stronghold for jihadi groups.
India’s Times Now cited local media reports that identified Rideout as a pilot who worked for an evangelical group called Serving In Mission (SIM). He has reportedly been living and performing humanitarian work in Niger since 2010. As of Thursday morning, there has been no official statement from U.S. or Nigerien officials identifying the victim.
A West African media group called Wamaps said the victim was brazenly kidnapped “just a few streets away from the presidential palace, right in the city center, in a zone which hosts international organizations.”
“None of the terrorist groups operating on Nigerien territory has claimed responsibility and no ransom has been demanded,” Wamaps added.
Nigerien security sources told CBS News the kidnapping took place within a hundred yards of the presidential palace, where deposed President Mohamed Barzoum has been kept under house arrest since a coup in July 2023.
These local security officials speculated that the abduction was carried out by the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, the regional ISIS affiliate, which has a strong presence along the shared border between the coup states of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. All three have exhibited a significant decline in counterterrorism performance since their legitimate governments were overthrown, and the juntas stopped cooperating with Western security forces.
The U.S. State Department confirmed the kidnapping took place but confirmed few other details of the incident.
CBS News said the U.S. Embassy in Niger is “adding security measures due to the risk of kidnapping, including requiring armored vehicles for Embassy personnel and family travel, imposing a curfew and declaring restaurants and open-air markets off-limits to personnel and their families.”
The embassy issued a security alert on Wednesday, based on “heightened concern about the threat of kidnapping.”
“It is a top priority for the Trump Administration to look after the safety of every American, and we are seeing efforts from across the U.S. government to support the recovery and safe return of this U.S. citizen,” a State Department spokesman said on Wednesday.
The BBC reported the victim’s phone was tracked to an area about 56 miles north of Niamey, well inside the border region that serves as an ISIS stronghold.
Security expert Bryan Stern, founder of the Grey Bull Rescue crisis response group, told Fox News Digital on Thursday that recovering the victim quickly is essential, because the kidnappers will probably hand him off to “smarter, a lot more capable, less disposable” criminals or terrorists.
“It’s easy to understand who took somebody, but once people start getting traded around like cards and stuff, it’s hard to then understand what the current holding party wants,” he said.
Stern noted the Nigerien border region has “31 flavors” of villainy, as everyone from Russian mercenaries to criminal gangs and Islamic fundamentalists operate in the area. This makes it difficult to know who is holding a captive until ransom demands are made.
“At some point, somebody will ask for something, you hope. It’s very scary when they don’t ask for anything,” he said.
“The worst case scenario is a hostage taken by someone who doesn’t want anything. Then there’s no play to be made other than find them and kill them, and hopefully you survive that process,” he explained.
Read the full article here