Accused Lindhout kidnapper admits in sting video receiving $10,000 of ransom
OTTAWA — The man accused of making ransom demands during journalist Amanda Lindhout’s kidnapping in Somalia told two undercover RCMP officers he received $10,000 for his role.
In Ontario Superior Court on Friday, the Crown played a secretly recorded video of Ali Omar Ader’s June 2015 meeting with the officers at an Ottawa hotel — the culmination of an elaborate ruse to elicit a confession.
Ader believed he had travelled to Canada from his home in Mogadishu to sign a contract with Vancouver-based Catalina Publishing for his book “A Slow Genocide,” a history of Somalia’s troubled last 20 years.
As part of the contract, he was told to divulge anything about him that might expose the company to risk, so that it could be ready with a public-relations plan.