Kidnapping accused feared a double-cross
OTTAWA • Amanda Lindhout’s mother says one of her daughter’s alleged Somalian abductors feared “he was being set up” for a doublecross as arrangements for a ransom payment were being finalized.
Lorinda Stewart told an Ontario court Thursday that talks with Ali Omar Ader in early November 2009 did not go well because Ader suddenly became “angry and afraid.”
Lindhout was a freelance journalist from Red Deer, Alta., when she and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan were grabbed near Mogadishu in August 2008. Both were released in November 2009.
Ader, 40, has pleaded not guilty in Ontario Superior Court to a criminal charge of hostage-taking for his alleged role. He was arrested by the RCMP in Ottawa in June 2015. It emerged during pretrial motions last spring that the Mounties had lured Ader to Canada through an elaborate scheme to sign a purported book-publishing deal.
The Crown says Ader admitted to undercover investigators on two occasions that he was the negotiator in the kidnapping and that he was paid $10,000 for his services.
Stewart testified that she flew to Nairobi, Kenya, to help arrange for the release of her daughter and Brennan after many months of distressing long-distance calls.
At one point, the captors were demanding US$2.5 million, but the families assembled less than US$700,000 after months of desperately trying to raise funds.
The plan was to electronically transfer the ransom funds from Sydney, Australia, to Mogadishu through a money-transfer service. An initial attempt to pay the ransom did not work out, but a second effort succeeded.
Trevor Brown, an Ottawabased lawyer for Ader, painted Stewart’s series of conversations as something of a confusing web due to Ader’s heavy accent and limited English and the difficulty of hearing properly on overseas phone links. He suggested it was impossible to know what role Ader was playing.
Stewart acknowledged receiving a follow-up phone message from Ader in January 2010, as well as later contact through Facebook.
Ader said he wanted to help Lindhout, and claimed he was “playing two sides” in the negotiations in order to save her, Brown told the court. Stewart said she didn’t necessarily believe Ader. “I didn’t trust him.”