American missionary abducted in Niger freed after nearly 10 months of captivity

On Aug. 14, Serving in Mission International, a Christian organization based in North Carolina, announced that its employee, Kevin Rideout, was finally released after spending nearly 10 months in captivity in the Sahel. Rideout, an American missionary pilot, was abducted by gunmen from his home, just 100 yards from the presidential palace in Niamey, Niger, last October. He was then transported to northern Mali, where he was held by the local Islamic State wing.

No group ever officially claimed credit for Rideout’s abduction. However, Rideout has confirmed he was held by the Islamic State’s Sahel Province, which is based in northern Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. It is unclear if militants belonging to the Islamic State actually abducted Rideout or if he was later sold to the group by other militants.

Few details have been reported about how Rideout was released, and it is unclear whether a ransom was paid. However, Rideout and Libyan officials confirmed that officials in the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Khalifa Haftar, played a significant role in the missionary’s release.

In his brief statement after arriving in Libya, Rideout personally thanked Saddam Haftar, the son of Khalifa and the LNA’s chief of staff, for his role in securing his release. The exact nature of this role is publicly unknown at the time of publication.

“I want to express my gratefulness … my thank you to General Saddam Haftar, the Libyan army and the special forces, and everybody who was involved in securing my release and involved in arranging all the logistics for me to be released and to be brought to Libya safely,” Rideout said.

Reuters, citing unnamed Libyan officials, reported that some Libyan authorities said that a “deal” was brokered with the Islamic State, while another told the outlet a ransom was paid. Yet another official told Reuters that the LNA conducted a military operation in northern Mali and physically freed Rideout. The exact story has not been confirmed.

Both the Islamic State’s Sahel Province and its rival, Al Qaeda’s Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), have historically abducted Westerners and other foreign nationals across the Sahel to obtain ransom payments that finance their operations. For instance, the most recent report of the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team stated that a $50 million ransom paid to JNIM by the United Arab Emirates last year helped finance JNIM’s offensive across Mali in April 2026.

Caleb Weiss is an editor of FDD’s Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa.