http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_3835.html
Travel Alert
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of Consular Affairs
This information is current as of today, Wed Apr 22 2009 18:58:36 GMT-0700 (PDT).
Mali
January 07, 2009
UPDATE:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gOSp3LEWdKuo3j0GAn5qKBpREgdA
“Canadian diplomats freed in Africa, Mali confirms”
9 hours ago
SNIPPET: “OTTAWA — Two Canadian diplomats kidnapped in Africa have been freed after four months in captivity, the government of Mali confirmed Wednesday.
A government spokesman said Louis Guay and Robert Fowler, a high-level UN diplomat who served as an adviser to several Canadian prime ministers, have been freed in northern Mali.
The men were on a UN mission in neighbouring Niger when they disappeared in December. Al-Qaida militants later claimed responsibility for their abduction.
A spokesman for Mali’s president says kidnappers have released four foreign hostages, including the two Canadian UN staffers.
Seydou Cissouma said Fowler and Guay were freed Wednesday, along with two women tourists kidnapped in a separate incident in January. He had no further details about two other men snatched in the same incident.
“We are aware of these media reports and have no comment at this time,” Catherine Loubier, a spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, when news reports first surfaced Wednesday of the release.
In February, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb claimed in an audio tape played on the Al-Jazeera television network that it was holding the two Canadians hostage.
It made no demands at that time, but in the past has received ransoms for western tourists kidnapped in the vast sub-Saharan region.”