STATE-run French radio in Paris reported on Tuesday that this month’s decision to cancel part of the Dakar-Cairo auto rally may have been due to Western intelligence agencies mistaking a wealthy Kuwaiti general hunting in the Niger desert for a terrorist threat to the race.
Radio France Internationale said the security alert was prompted when Kuwaiti General Fahad Al-Humaydi was spotted by an observation plane hunting in the Sahara desert accompanied by local security forces and some 20 four-wheel drive vehicles, tanker trucks and communications gear.
The radio did not cite a source for its report.
Niger’s Tourism Minister Rhissa Ag Boula, accompanying President Mamadou Tandja in Paris, confirmed that a Kuwaiti prince had been hunting in the area at the time of the rally, as “he has done for the past five years or so.”
The French foreign ministry strongly denied the report.