A man accused of holding Amanda Lindhout hostage in Somalia is telling a judge he didn't receive ransom money — even though he twice told undercover RCMP officers he got $10,000 US.
Testifying today in Ontario Superior Court, Ali Omar Ader says that in 2013, he lied about being paid to a Mountie posing as his business agent because it was what the man wanted to hear.
At the time, Ader believed he was meeting the businessman on the island of Mauritius to discuss plans to publish his book about Somalia.
Ader says he repeated the lie two years later in a secretly recorded video in Ottawa — this time with his supposed agent and a second Mountie posing as a publisher — because he wanted to make his dream of being an author come true.
Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan were abducted by armed men while working on a story in August 2008, the beginning of 15 months in captivity.
Ader, a 40-year-old Somalian national who speaks some English, has pleaded not guilty to a criminal charge of hostage-taking for his alleged role as a negotiator and translator.
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