The Nation Newspaper

Tag: French hostages

  • Freed French hostages leave Niger

    Four Frenchmen held hostage in the Sahara desert by al Qaeda-linked gunmen for three years left Niger on a French government plane on Wednesday morning.

    The men, who were kidnapped in 2010 while working for French nuclear group Areva and a subsidiary of construction group Vinci in northern Niger, were freed on Tuesday after secret talks.

    A Reuters’ correspondent at Niamey airport said the four men boarded the jet with two French ministers, including Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, dispatched to pick them up.

    “I am very happy. It was difficult, the ordeal of a lifetime,” said Thierry Dol, one of the freed men.

    Fabius said the men were in a state of shock, having been isolated for so long. “They slept well, but on the floor as they are not yet able to sleep on mattresses,” he said.

    The men’s release gave Francois Hollande a boost a day after a poll showed he had become the most unpopular French president on record.

    No details have been given on the circumstances of the quartet’s release but Niger’s President Mohamadou Issoufou said they had been retrieved from northern Mali.

    Thousands of French troops were dispatched to Mali’s desert north earlier this year to prevent Islamists and criminal gangs operating in the zone who occupied the region in 2012 from extending their reach further south.

     

  • Boko Haram got $3.15 m to free French hostages

    Islamist sect, Boko Haram was paid an equivalent of around $3.15 million by French and Cameroonian negotiators before freeing seven French hostages this month, Reuters reported Friday quoting  ‘a confidential Nigerian government report.’
    It said the  memo did not specify  who paid the ransom for the family of seven, who were all released on April 19.
    Cameroon was said to have  freed some Boko Haram detainees as part of the deal.
    France and Cameroon reiterated denials that any ransom was paid. Nigerian authorities declined to comment.
    Armed men on motorcycles snatched Tanguy Moulin-Fournier, his wife, brother and the couple’s four young children, the youngest of whom was four years old, on February 19 while they were on holiday near the Waza national park in north Cameroon, some 10 km  from the Nigerian border.
    The Nigerian memo,according to Reuters, suggests that 1.6 billion CFA francs ($3.15 million) was paid, but that right up until the last minute Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau had insisted on double that, before agreeing to reduce it if some Boko Haram members in Cameroonian jails were freed.
    Reacting to the report, a French foreign ministry official said that France has passed a clear message that it does not pay ransoms. Cameroon government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary said “Cameroon did not pay any ransom”.
    A spokesman for Nigeria’s government declined to comment.
    The report suggests Nigerian security forces decided not to try to rescue the hostages so as not to endanger their lives. A botched rescue attempt of a British and an Italian hostage believed to have been held by Islamist sect Ansaru in March last year resulted in both hostages being killed.
    French news network i-tele reported earlier yesterday  that a ransom had of $7 million had been paid, suggesting either Cameroon President Paul Biya or GDF-Suez had paid it.
    Eight French hostages are being held in the Sahel region, although the fate of one of them is unclear after al-Qaeda’s north African arm last month said it had beheaded Philippe Verdon.
    Hollande has said Paris has ended a policy of paying ransoms for hostages, but suspicion that the country still does despite official denials has been a source of tension with the United States.
    France brushed off an allegation by a former U.S. diplomat that it paid a $17 million ransom in vain for the release of four hostages abducted in 2010 from Niger.
    Hollande told the family of the Sahel hostages in January that the new policy also meant that he had told companies and insurance firms to not pay ransoms.
  • Seven French hostages released in Cameroon

    Seven French hostages released in Cameroon

    A French family of seven including four children kidnapped in northern Cameroon and taken to Nigeria by suspected Boko Haram militants have been released, a senior Cameroon official said on Friday.

    “They are all alive and well,’’ Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, secretary-general of Cameroon’s presidency, said in a statement carried by state radio.

    He said the family had been handed over to Cameroon authorities late on Thursday.

    The family, which was on holiday, was abducted in February by men on motorcycles, armed with Kalashnikovs in Dabanga about 10 km from the Nigerian border near the Waza national park.

    Gunmen claiming to be from Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram later released videos of the family, threatening to kill them if authorities in Nigeria and Cameroon did not release Muslim militants held there.

    The parents of the family, which included two boys and two girls as well as another relative, work for French utility firm GDF Suez.

  • French hostages’ families seek negotiations with Al Qaeda

    The families of four hostages being held by Al-Qaeda’s North African branch on Monday urged the French government to seek negotiations with the militant group in the hope of securing their relatives’ release.

    AFP says the call was issued against a background of fears for the lives of the hostages following the reported killing of two Al-Qaeda-linked leaders by French-backed Chadian troops in Mali over the weekend.

    “France must give AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) clear signals of a willingness to negotiate, in liaison with (the hostages’ employers) Areva and Vinci,” said a statement issued on behalf of the families of four hostages seized at uranium mine in Niger in 2010.

    According to Chadian officials, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the mastermind of an assault on an Algerian gas plant that left 37 foreign hostages dead in January, and AQIM leader Abdelhamid Abou Zeid were killed last week in an assault on rebel bases in the Ifoghas mountains of northern Mali.

    France has been extremely guarded about the reports, amid concerns the hostages may have been used as human shields or could be subject to reprisal executions.

    The hostages’ families have repeatedly expressed concern about the possible consequences of France’s military intervention in its former colony but Monday’s statement was the first time they have publicly challenged the government’s approach.

    “Today we consider that military operations and the use of force will not result in the hostages being saved,” said Rene Robert, the grandfather of Pierre Legrand, one of four hostages seized by AQIM in Niger in September 2010.

    “We want a strong signal to be sent to AQIM to demonstrate a willingness to negotiate,” he told AFP.

     

  • Confusion over French hostages’ release

    Confusion over French hostages’ release

    …They were not released in Nigeria – JTF

    … No official confirmation that they had been freed – French minister

    Reports that seven French hostages kidnapped in Cameroon were found alive and safe in a house in northern Nigeria on Thursday are false, a Nigerian military spokesman has said.

    “It’s not true,” said Sagir Musa, spokesman for the Joint Task Force in Borno State, where the hostages were reported to have been released.

    Reports quoting French and Cameroonian officials had earlier said the hostages were rescued and  freed in Nigeria.

    “They were found abandoned in a house in Dikwa” in Nigeria, about 100km [60 miles] from the border with Niger, a senior Cameroonian officer told AFP.

    “They are in the hands of the Nigerian authorities,” the officer added.

    Reuters reports that France’s minister for veterans’ affairs told parliament the four children and three adults abducted on Tuesday had been released.

    Few minutes later he said there was no official confirmation that they had been freed.

     

     

  • Cameroon claims French hostages ‘now in Nigeria’

    Cameroon claims French hostages ‘now in Nigeria’

    The Islamist militants believed to have abducted a French family of seven, including four children, in Cameroon on Tuesday have taken them into Nigeria, Cameroon’s foreign ministry said.

    Reuters reports that the abduction highlights the growing risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa since Paris sent forces into Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels occupying the country’s north.

    “The kidnappers have crossed the Nigerian border with their hostages,” junior minister Joseph Dion Ngute said in a statement late on Tuesday.

    He added that security in the Dabanga area, 10 km (six miles) from the Nigerian border, had been reinforced and “urgent measures” put in place to find the hostages.

    It is the first case of foreigners being seized in the mostly Muslim north of Cameroon, a former French colony.

    Speaking on French television on Wednesday, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said all the evidence pointed to Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, but there did not appear to be a direct link with France’s intervention in Mali.

    “We believe it’s the Boko Haram group that carried out the kidnapping, but we don’t know for sure. Unfortunately, terror breeds terror,” Le Drian told France 2 television.

    “Now this group …has started taking children.”

    France intervened in Mali last month after Islamist rebels seized control of the north of the country and pushed south towards the capital Bamako.

    “It’s these groups that are calling for the same fundamentalism, whether it’s in Mali or in Somalia or in Nigeria. And it’s these groups that threaten our security,” Le Drian said.

    French President Francois Hollande said the kidnappings would not stop France from pursuing its operation in Mali.