In a new video purportedly released by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM militants warn the French government to stay out of negotiating the release of Swede Johan Gustafsson and South African Stephen McGown. Gustafsson and McGown and two other men, Dutch national Sjaak Rijke and a German man, were kidnapped by AQIM in November 2011 at a restaurant in Timbuktu, Mali. The German man was killed when he refused to get into his kidnapper's truck. Last month, AQIM released a video of the men for the Gift of the Givers Foundation, a South African disaster relief organization working on the duo's release. The video by AQIM is titled "A Message to the South African and Swedish Governments." al-Qaeda has been making news in the Maghreb as they jostle for power with the Islamic State, whom they are currently at war against. Most recently, al-Qaeda gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali and killed as many as 20 people. The massacre was carried out by perpetrated by an al-Qaeda affiliate group known as al-Mourabitoun. al-Mourabitoun is an African militant jihadist group from the northern Mali regions of Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao. According to the the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, al-Mourabitoun was "created as a result of a merger between notorious [al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb]... and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujwa)." The Maghreb is normally defined as much of the land of western North Africa or Northwest Africa, west of Egypt. The term maghrib is Arabic for "sunset", which is synonymous for "west", and is where the region gets its name. AQIM is not ISIS. In fact, ISIS and AQIM are at war against each other and al-Qaeda has called the Islamic State "un-jihadi."
