West trades accusations over hostage ransoms

West trades accusations over hostage ransoms

Press quote (Voice of America)
15 September 2014
Ian Bond is head of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform.

“What we saw with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb was that they did very good business by kidnapping Western tourists in places like Niger and Mali and then collected ransoms from governments in Europe. And that’s a very negative phenomenon," said Bond.