American missionary kidnapped from home in Niger’s capital by armed men, sources tell CBS News

Johannesburg — Multiple security sources in the West African nation of Niger told CBS News on Wednesday that an American national was kidnapped from his home in the capital Niamey on Tuesday night.

They said the abduction by unknown assailants took place only about 100 yards from the presidential palace in Niamey, where ousted President Mohamed Bazoum has been held since he was toppled by a coup more than two years ago.  

Sources told CBS News the man abducted on Tuesday is a missionary who has worked for years as a pilot for a U.S.-based charity. 

CBS News has asked the U.S. State Department for any information it can provide about the apparent abduction.

The sources said the American was kidnapped by three unidentified armed men. The abductee had been expected to take a taxi to Niamey’s airport, where he was scheduled to board a Royal Air Maroc flight on Tuesday night.

Messages circulating among security officials in Niamey suggested the American had been working in Niger since 2010.

There has been no known demand from any kidnappers, nor any official response from the Nigerien government nor the U.S. Embassy in Niamey.

The apparent kidnapping comes two years after a July 2023 coup that removed Bazoum and brought General Abdourahamane Tiani to power, with his military junta vowing to restore security. 

Sources told CBS News the back door of the presidential palace is just a few hundred yards from where the kidnapping took place, in the capital’s highly secured Plateau district. 

Sources told CBS News that Basoum has been held in the palace since his ouster, living in two rooms with no windows and no outside contact permitted by the military junta apart from an occasional doctor’s visit. Tiani has stayed in a military barracks not far from the residential palace since seizing power.

Security officials in the region have speculated that the abduction could be the work of the ISIS affiliate in the region, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, which operates in the area along the shared borders of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. 

From Niamey, it is only about a one-hour drive to the Burkina Faso border, and two hours to the Malian border.

Multiple Nigerien sources said Wednesday that the abduction was carried out by “three armed individuals” who “neutralized the guard before taking over their victim and quickly leaving the scene.”

They said the kidnapped American’s phone was tracked less than an hour after the abduction late Tuesday night to a location about 56 miles north of Niamey — in an area “considered a sanctuary for groups affiliated with the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara” between the Nigerien capital and the Malian border. 

All three of the neighboring states have seen military regimes overthrow civilian rule within the last half of a decade, along with Gabon and Guinea, earning the region of West and Central Africa the dubious moniker of Africa’s “coup belt.”