Tuareg rebels from the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) coalition gather in Kidal, Mali, on April 26, 2026.
AFP
Weapons and several million dollars were reportedly handed over to the kidnappers of a Swiss woman and an Austrian woman in exchange for their release, according to Swiss public broadcaster RTS.
Saddam Haftar, the strongman of eastern Libya, is said to have played a key role in securing the freedom of the two women after their kidnapping in Niger. Switzerland’s foreign ministry says it has no knowledge of such arrangements and maintains that no ransom was paid by the Swiss authorities.
Swiss national Claudia Abbt, 69, and Eva Gretzmacher, a 76-year-old Austrian, were abducted in Agadez, Niger, in 2025 and held hostage for nearly two years in the Sahel. A week after their release, a Libyan rebel group announced that it intercepted weapons and cash intended for their kidnappers. RTS has been in contact with their leader, Mohamed Wardougou, head of the Southern Liberation Operations Room (SLOR), a rebel group opposed to Haftar, the new strongman of eastern Libya who facilitated the releases via his networks in the region.
According to the rebel leader, 50 suicide drones were seized when his soldiers arrested a group of five men linked to the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and implicated in the abduction and transport of the two European women. He said the five individuals were arrested in the Salvador Pass area, a strategic desert crossroads between Niger, Libya and Algeria, while they were returning from the Tamanhint military base in south-western Libya. It was there that men loyal to Haftar allegedly handed over money and military equipment to them.
Saddam Haftar at a military parade in Benghazi, Libya, in 2024.
AFP
According to the detailed inventory provided by Wardougou to RTS, the prisoners, all of Malian nationality, were also carrying an RPG rocket launcher, ten AK-47 assault rifles and ten Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles. The rebel leader said each courier was given 10 million CFA francs in cash (approximately CHF14,000) as payment for transporting the hostages. According to the same source, two similar deliveries of funds and military equipment had taken place earlier.
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Swiss and Austrian hostages freed in Niger
Swiss foreign ministry insists it paid nothing
Was a ransom transported during these journeys? RTS was unable to obtain information on this matter. According to a source close to the negotiations contacted by RTS, Haftar used $2.5 million of his own funds to pay the ransom. The aim was to burnish his reputation and cement his international position (see infobox below).
According to a local source, this sum, which is below regional standards, was reportedly negotiated downwards, as the Austrian hostage’s poor health threatened the outcome of the exchange. The individual concerned did not comment on these details. RTS enquiries to Haftar’s office and his military staff went unanswered.
Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, Saddam’s father, waves to the crowd after the holy Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, in Benghazi, Libya, on March 31, 2025.
AFP
But other accounts are circulating. According to Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya specialist and research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, sources suggest that the United Arab Emirates paid $10 million. The UAE, which relies on the Haftar family to consolidate its influence in North Africa and the Sahel region, is said to have already paid $50 million in autumn 2025 to secure the release of a retired Emirati general with close ties to the ruling family in Dubai. The general had been abducted near Bamako, Mali, and held hostage for one month.
The Swiss foreign ministry insists it paid nothing to secure Claudia Abbt’s release and says it has no information to suggest that a ransom was paid.
It said: “As is its custom, Switzerland has, in this case too, neither paid any ransom nor provided any other consideration in exchange for the release of the Swiss hostage. Furthermore, Switzerland has no evidence to suggest that a ransom was paid by third parties or that any other transactions took place.”
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‘Ransoms were definitely paid’
Harchaoui disagrees: “Ransoms were definitely paid. Nothing was achieved through some miracle of the Holy Spirit, and certainly not through violence. Each stage of these releases was achieved through financial means. And there are quite serious indications that the money was provided by the UAE.”
The transaction was allegedly facilitated by Chérif Ould Taher, regarded as one of the drug lords in northern Mali. He is close to Haftar but also to terrorists, according to Wardougou, who warns against the dangers of such dealings. “The weapons and money received by these groups strengthen their power and threaten the stability of the region as well as the whole world,” he said.
This view is shared by Nicolas Normand, former French ambassador to Mali – a country plagued by numerous kidnappings of Westerners – and author of Le Grand Livre de l’Afrique (published by Eyrolles). He reckons that in 99% of kidnapping cases a ransom is paid, with direct consequences for the firepower of terrorist organisations and the market value of foreign nationals in the Sahel-Saharan belt.
“The first consequence is that it encourages them to take more hostages. Since it’s a business, it brings them money. It’s a significant sum, after all. The second consequence is that this money is used to buy weapons and to pay their fighters’ wages. They use it to recruit young people, indoctrinate them and arm them,” he says.
Saddam Haftar, the all-powerful mediator
As the designated successor to his father, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, Saddam Haftar has gradually established himself as the clan’s principal political and military heir. Appointed commander-in-chief of the Libyan National Army (LNA) last August, he is seeking to consolidate the family’s grip on eastern and southern Libya, particularly in Fezzan, where his authority remains contested. He is aligned with the camp opposed to the UN-recognised government in Tripoli, in a country still divided between two rival centres of power.
His involvement in the hostage crisis has been the subject of significant media attention, as shown by the reception he gave the two European hostages at his offices in Benghazi following their release. The aim of this media coverage is to give him the international prominence he still lacks, according to researcher Jalel Harchaoui: “For Saddam Haftar, the idea is to say: ‘I exist in the Sahel (…). I obviously control the whole of south-western Libya’, which is not necessarily the objective reality, ‘and I am so secure within my own territory that I am able to project my influence globally, of my own accord’.”
In August 2026, Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s son had already played a role in the release of an American held by Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, as well as two Russian nationals, members of the Wagner Group, who had been abducted in July 2024 by Tuareg armed groups in Mali. These operations, for which ransoms are also said to have been paid, have helped establish Saddam Haftar as a key intermediary for securing the release of hostages and prisoners held in the Sahel.
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Translated from French, sub-edited by Simon Bradley/gw
