That ill Advised Rescue Mission

When I heard media reports of the standoff taking place in sokoto state I never had the slightest inkling that it was going to blow up into a major Diplomatic row that is threatning the relationship of 2 European allies; Italy and Britain.

When the dust cleared, it was confirmed that security operatives backed by British special forces have tried to rescue an Italian and a briton who have been held captive by suspected militants with affiliations to Alqaeda. During the ill fated rescue the two hostages where executed by their captors.

While Britain and France are using diplomatic channels to unravel the circumstances of the incidence, in Nigeria Nobody is asking questions and nobody is giving any answers.
Media reports indicate that
Part of a €1.2m ransom was paid to
release hostages Chris McManus and
Franco Lamolinara, who were killed
during the raid on Thursday.
The ransom talks, in which both
British and Italian officials had
participated, began with a request for
€5m and the release of prisoners, a
Mauritanian news agency reported, quoting
sources close to the captors.
During the talks, questions were sent
to the kidnappers for the hostages to
answer about their families to prove
they were still alive.
The British took a tougher line in
negotiations than the Italians and
demands eventually settled on €1.2m
Or no prisoner release, the fact that they hostages have been abducted since May 2011 and have been kept alive shows that the ransom motives were genuine .
After an initial down payment has already been made, British and
Nigerian operatives followed
the Pple who came for the payments back to their hideout,
setting up the raid.
The Italian foreign ministry declined to
comment on the report. The Italians
protested that London failed to inform
them of the raid until it was under
way President Giorgio Napolitano
called Britain’s unilateral action
“inexplicable”.
Operatives from Britain’s elite Special
Boat Service and Nigerian soldiers
surrounded the kidnappers’ hideout
on Wednesday, a day before the
firefight in which McManus and
Lamolinara were killed, the Italian
paper Corriere della Sera reported on
Saturday. Quoting a Nigerian
journalist, Ahmad Salkida, the paper
said that, once surrounded, the
kidnappers asked to be able to flee
the hideout but their request was
turned down by soldiers, who
demanded they surrender. The
kidnappers refused and the raid got
under way.
The wife of one of the guards holding
the hostages said on Saturday the
two men were taken into a lavatory
and shot dead during the rescue
attempt.
The woman, who gave her name only
as Hauwa and said she was 31, cried
into her hands as she spoke to
Reuters. Hauwa said bullets were fired
into the room where she and her
husband were staying, killing him.
“After that, there were about six men
who came out of the house with the
two hostages,” she said. “They came
into our wing of the compound,
pushed the captives into the toilet
and just shot them. I screamed.”
Nigerian authorities have detained
five Islamist militants suspected of
involvement in the kidnapping. Two of
the men were arrested before the
rescue attempt and three at the
compound where the raid took place.
Italian secret service officials were first
alerted to the raid by British
counterparts at 10.15am on
Thursday, Corriere della Sera
reported. They, in turn, informed
Italian PM Mario Monti 15 minutes
later. By 12.30, the UK ambassador to
Italy, Christopher Prentice, was
holding talks with Italian government
officials to update them on the
operation.
British government officials have said
Italy had been told of the possibility of
a raid and Corriere della Sera said
Italian defence minister Giampaolo Di
Paola had been informed the week
before that special forces had been
deployed to the area.
But politicians across the political
spectrum in Italy have demanded to
know why Rome was not warned that
the raid was about to take place,
calling it a “slap in the face”.
Italy’s predilection for negotiating with
kidnappers instead of rescuing
hostages through force was shown in
Afghanistan in 2007, when it released
Taliban prisoners in return for the
freeing of an Italian journalist.
One Italian analyst said the country’s
declining prestige on the world stage
during Berlusconi’s years in office
meant the UK was less inclined to
share its plans with Rome.
“Italy is weak internationally and not
considered an equal ally,” said Nicola
Pedde, the director of Rome thinktank
the Institute for Global Studies. “We
are coming out of a period which
demolished Italy’s reputation, the
effects of which we have already seen
during the Libya campaign.”
But Pedde said it was also possible
that Italy had been consulted about
the raid, but had not responded. “I
have heard one rumour that the
Italian secret services had been told
but had yet to inform Monti, and
another that the services had passed
on the information but had not been
told yet how to respond.

While all this is on in Europe, back home in Nigeria we have only been told that suspects have been arrested and that President GEJ has written condolence letters to the families of the hostages. Questions relating to Who ordered the operation involving foreign troops on NIGERIAN soil? Or was the rescue bid the best option to take given the facts of the case? Remain unanswered.