NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - Shortly after al Qaeda gunmen stormed a giant gas plant deep in the Algerian desert last month, taking hundreds of workers hostage, their leader switched on his satellite phone to ring a journalist thousands of miles away.
"He told me 'I am Abu Al Bara and this is my number. Call me whenever you want'," said Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Aboulmaaly, editor-in-chief of the Nouakchott News Agency (ANI), a news website in Mauritania's capital on West Africa's Atlantic coast.
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