Saturday, June 13, 2015
After she was kidnapped, raped and tortured in Somalia, Amanda Lindhout's story made international headlines. Now, nearly seven years later, Canada's national police force says it has arrested a man they believe was the primary negotiator in the Canadian freelance journalist's kidnapping.
Following an extensive cross-border investigation, police announced Friday they arrested and charged 37-year-old Somali national Ali Omar Ader with the hostage taking of Lindhout and her Australian colleague, Nigel Brennan.
The two journalists were kidnapped and forcibly confined on August 23, 2008 and released on November 25, 2009. Their families raised more than $1 million for their release. Ader was the "main negotiator" in the kidnapping, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
Police said they arrested Ader on June 11 in Ottawa after an "extremely complex investigation" that included surveillance, wiretaps and undercover agents.
Police said he was not living in Canada, but he had been in Ottawa for a few days when he was arrested, the CBC reported.
Under the Canadian Criminal Code, hostage taking carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Police said Lindhout and Brennan provided statements to police "that greatly assisted in advancing the investigation."
Following the news of the arrest, Brennan tweeted, "Amazing news of the arrest of Ali Omar Ader, AKA Adan the Somali criminal involved in my kidnapping. Finally justice will be served!"
After her release, Lindhout co-wrote the bestselling book A House in the Sky with journalist Sara Corbett detailing her harrowing experience. She was shackled in a shed, starved and repeatedly raped by a group of teenaged boys.
In the book, she described her captors, including a man known to her as "Adam", whom Corbett told VICE News is the person police arrested.
"There was Hassam, who was one of the market boys, and Jamal, who doused himself in cologne and mooned over the girl he planned to marry, and Abdullah, who just wanted to blow himself up. There was Yusuf and Yahya and Young Mohammed," Lindhout wrote.
"There was Adam, who made calls to my mother in Canada, scaring her with his threats, and Old Mohammed, who handled the money, whom we nicknamed Donald Trump. There was the man we called Skids, who drove me out into the desert one night and watched impassively as another man held a serrated knife to my throat. And finally, there was Romeo, who'd been accepted into graduate school in New York City but first was trying to make me his wife."