WASHINGTON: The wife of an American humanitarian worker who was kidnapped in Niger five years ago said Wednesday that her husband’s captors have made a multimillion-dollar ransom demand but US government “restrictions” have hindered her ability to raise the sum.
Els Woodke said she believes her husband, Jeff Woodke, is in the custody of a West African affiliate of Al-Qaeda known as JNIM and that she received information indicating he was alive as of this summer. She said the group’s leader, Iyad Ag Ghali, has a history of negotiating for the release of hostages, and she pleaded directly with him on Wednesday to free her husband.
“Releasing Jeff will require compassion and mercy, but these are the characteristics of a strong and courageous leader,” Woodke said in remarks addressed to Ghali in English and French.
In her most extensive remarks about her husband’s ordeal, she also expressed her discontent with aspects of the US government’s approach. She said she has been repeatedly told that if she discloses details about her husband’s case, she will be cut off from receiving additional information.
She said the captors have demanded a multimillion-dollar ransom, though precise sums have not been consistent and US officials have not facilitated her efforts to pay. The US government does not encourage ransom payments in hostage cases but has also made clear that prosecutors are not interested in charging relatives who choose to make such payments.
“I have also had so many restrictions imposed by the US government that any meaningful attempt to raise a ransom is effectively prohibited,” she said.
She did not elaborate, and a spokeswoman for the State Department did not immediately comment.
Woodke was kidnapped from his home in Abalak, Niger, in October 2016 by men who ambushed and killed his guards and forced Woodke at gunpoint into their truck, where he was driven north toward Mali’s border. Though he was believed to have been abducted by a West African affiliate of the Islamic State, Woodke is now thought to be in Africa’s vast Sahel region and held by JNIM.
Els Woodke urged the government of Mali to make the release of her husband and other hostages held by JNIM a precondition of negotiations with the group. She urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to make good on his promise in February that he “would not take any options” off the table in her husband’s case.
She said that based on information she received from the government and “other sources,” she believes that Jeff Woodke was alive at least as of this summer.
Plus, she added, “If he would have died, I am sure that would not have gone unnoticed. That news would have been passed on. That is for an even stronger indication” that he is still alive.