He Says the Islamic State Held Him in Mali. Nobody Agrees on How He Got Out.
Kevin Rideout is free after nine months in the Sahel. Four accounts of how that happened are now public, and one of them involves a ransom.
Kevin Rideout flew supply runs across West Africa for about twenty years. Wells, refugees, hospitals, flood relief, literacy classes. His brother Ian flew the same routes for the same mission.
On October 21, 2025, three men took him outside his home in the Château 1 neighbourhood of Niamey, in the middle of Niger's capital, a short walk from the presidential palace. He was fifty. He has a wife, Krista, and four children.
On Friday, August 14, his agency said he was free. Two days later he sat in front of a camera in Libya and said he had been held by the Islamic State as a prisoner in Mali.
That is where the agreement stops. Four accounts of how Rideout got out are now in public. They do not fit together, and one of them involves money.
