One year after she was kidnapped by Islamic extremists, a third video has emerged of Swiss missionary Beatrice Stockly, in which she says she is in "good health" despite her bleak circumstances.
According to the Middle East Monitor, the video was released by the Sahara division of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on Tuesday via Twitter and lasts 2.17 minutes. In it, Stockly appears clad in a black veil and speaks in French, with a feeble voice barely audible.
In the video, Stockly says the date of the recording is late December and that she has been held captive by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim) for 360 days. She greets her family and thanks the Swiss government "for all the efforts they have made".
"I am in good health," she adds.
In late January 2016, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility in a video for Stockly's kidnapping, which took place that same month.
The group said it would free her in exchange for a number of Al-Qaeda militants jailed in Mali and one of their leaders held in The Hague; however, Switzerland has demanded her release without conditions.
The video is the third footage released by the terrorist group since her kidnap in Mali's northern city of Timbuktu a year ago, according to reports. At the time, armed men knocked at her home and took her after she opened the door.
The group released a second similar video in mid-June to prove she was still alive.
"Beatrice Stockly is a Swiss nun who declared war against Islam in her attempt to Christianize Muslims," the speaker said in the second video.
Stockly, who is in her 50's, is a Christian missionary who began her work in Africa by responding to an advertisement in 2002 placed by an Evangelical Christian pastor who led a Germany-based missionary group called Neues Leben Ghana, or "New Life Ghana". Stockly traveled to Mali with the group and worked with them in Timbuktu for a few years before going out on her own.
She was first abducted by jihadists in northern Mali's Timbuktu in 2012. On that occasion, she was freed about two weeks later, and opted to keep living in Mali.
"I can't talk about it, I'm really in shock," Stockly told the media just after her release.
According to World Watch Monitor, AQIM, which is based in the Sahara Desert between Mali, Niger and Algeria, was involved in the January attack in Ouagadougou, the capital of neighbouring Burkina Faso, which left 29 dead, including a US missionary and six Canadians visiting the country on behalf of a church. Last week AQIM released Jocelyn Elliott, an Australian Christian woman kidnapped with her husband as "not to make women involved in the war".
