Burkino Faso Mali Spanish Hostages

AP News - 534 days ago
Burkino Faso Mali Spanish Hostages
Spanish aid worker, Roque Pascual , left, Spanish Secretary of State Soraya Rodrigues, 2nd left, Spanish aid worker, Albert Vilalta, 2nd right, and the Spanish Ambassador Cristina Diaz Fernandez-Gil talk after leaving a helicopter in the grounds of the presidential palace in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso after their release Monday, Aug. 23, 2010. The two Spanish aid workers kidnapped almost nine months ago by an al-Qaida affiliate were freed Monday in Mali after a multi-million-dollar ransom was reportedly paid _ a sign of the terrorist group's growing sophistication in bankrolling operations through kidnappings, experts said Monday. Aid workers Roque Pascual and Albert Vilalta were abducted last November when their convoy of 4-by-4s was attacked by gunmen on a stretch of road in Mauritania. They were whisked away to Mali, whose northern half is now one of the many stretches of remote desert where al-Qaida of Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, has stretched its tentacles. (AP Photo/Brahima Ouedraogo)