President Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to punish the Al-Qaeda killers of the French hostage Michel Germaneau.

The murder of the 78-year old was announced following a failed raid by French and Mauritanian troops on an Al-Qaeda desert camp last Thursday. As yet, it is not clear whether Germaneau was killed following the raid which resulted in the deaths of six members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) or if he were killed beforehand. AQIM has said it would execute him earlier this month following France’s refusal to organize a prisoner exchange.

Sarkozy’s language is only to be expected after an event such as this, but it is far from inspiring. How many times have we heard politicians vowing to track down and capture terrorists after some appalling attack? Two of the biggest terrorists of all, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, are still at large nearly nine years after 9/11. It is difficult to see those involved in this latest atrocity being caught.

An atrocity it certainly was. Like so many of Al-Qaeda’s victims — Paul Johnson murdered here five years ago by Al-Qaeda followers or Edwin Dyer murdered by the same AQIM last year — Germaneau was an innocent who had nothing to do with his country’s politics or Al-Qaeda’s battles. He, unlike AQIM, was on the side of light. He had been helping develop schools and health services in northern Niger. But that is the terrorists’ strategy. They specialize in going for innocent people because they are easy targets.

As for summarily executing hostages, that is what the Nazis did. It is one of the things that singled them out as demonstrably evil and it is what singles out Al-Qaeda as evil as well — and those who cannot recognize this, who still cling to the view that it is fighting a fundamentally noble cause have themselves lost a part of their own humanity.

Imagine if Hamas in its rage at the murderous Israeli onslaught on Gaza at the end of last year had summarily executed Gilad Shalit, the captured Israeli soldier. It would have been condemned — and rightly so — as the action of no more than a collection of murderous brutes. But that is not its way. Whatever people think of its politics, it has a moral compass. Those who would demonize it paint it in Al-Qaeda’s bloody colors and they should reflect on this very specific difference between the two.

Further attacks by AQIM on French citizens and interests in the Sahel region of Africa — Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Niger and Chad — cannot be ruled out; AQIM sees France as its prime target (it also added China to the list following the violent riots in July last year in Urumchi). The vow made by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in the Mauritanian capital after Germaneau’s murder was announced — that France would fight militancy in the region — is therefore of far greater significance than that by his president. Increased military cooperation between France, Mauritania, Mali and Niger in particular will be the outcome. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to overestimate the scale of the threat from AQIM in the Sahel area. Mauritania or Mali are not Afghanistan. AQIM has its operatives throughout the region. It may even have been trying to develop biological weapons last year. It certainly has its supporters in Europe. But the fact that it only goes for civilian targets shows its limitations.