what would jacques chirac do for his fellow french citizen ??
French Reporter Being Held Hostage Is Shown on Videotape
By ROBERT F. WORTH
AGHDAD, Iraq, March 1 - Looking gaunt and exhausted as she stared into the camera, a French newspaper reporter being held hostage said her health was "very bad" and pleaded for help in a videotape that surfaced today.
Florence Aubenas, 43, a veteran correspondent for the French daily Liberation, appeared sitting in front of a maroon background, clutching her knees with her arms. She stared intently at the camera as she spoke, dressed in a white sweater with her hair falling into her eyes.
"I'm very bad psychologically also," she said in English. "Please it's urgent now, help me."
Ms. Aubenas, who disappeared after leaving a Baghdad hotel with her Iraqi translator on Jan. 5, also appealed specifically for help from Didier Julia, the French lawmaker who has interceded on behalf of other hostages.
The videotape was dropped at the offices of a news agency in Baghdad, The Associated Press reported.
Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, said in London today that the French government had received evidence in recent days that Ms. Aubenas was alive, adding that he did not know when the videotape was made.
The videotape appeared as the network of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack in Hilla on Monday morning that killed at least 122 people, the Reuters news agency reported.
The bombing, which left at least 170 wounded, was aimed at a crowd of Iraqi police and Army recruits who were lined up outside a medical clinic, but it also killed women and children. It was the deadliest single bombing since the American invasion nearly two years ago.
The claim by Mr. Zarqawi's group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, could not be verified.
Two weeks ago American and Iraqi forces captured two of Mr. Zarqawi's aides, and military officials say they believe they are close to capturing Mr. Zarqawi himself.
But Monday's bombing made especially clear that the Iraqi security forces are still vulnerable to attacks by insurgents.
At a news conference in Baghdad today, Iraq's defense minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, highlighted the achievements of the Iraqi armed forces, which now include 10 Army divisions. But he added that Iraq will still need the guidance and help of the American military for some time to come.
Mr. Shalaan also provided new details about the recent arrest of Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, a half-brother of Saddam Hussein who has been accused of playing a major role in the organizing and financing of the insurgency.
Mr. Hassan was captured by Iraqi and coalition forces, Mr. Shalaan said, not Syrian forces, as Iraqi officials had said on Sunday. The Syrians provided the information, he added.
Mr. Shalaan declined to say where Mr. Hassan had been captured or to provide any more information about his arrest, saying simply that it was a "small operation" in which Iraqi special forces and coalition forces cooperated.
Today was an unusually calm day across Iraq, with no combat deaths reported by the American or Iraqi militaries. In one violent incident reported by American military officials, Iraqi soldiers killed eight insurgents and captured 11 after encountering an insurgent checkpoint during a reconnaissance mission near Baghdad. Four Iraqi soldiers were injured in the incident, the officials said.
Ms. Aubenas is at least the third French journalist to have been kidnapped in Iraq. Two others, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, were released in December after four months in captivity.
Mr. Julia, the lawmaker to whom Ms. Aubenas appealed on the videotape, tried unsuccessfully to mediate for the release of Mr. Chesnot and Mr. Malbrunot in September without authorization from the French government.
French officials criticized him at the time, and the incident was widely publicized.
Another kidnapped reporter, Giulana Sgrena, appeared in a videotape released two weeks ago pleading for her life and urging foreigners to leave the country. Ms. Sgrena, 56, a reporter for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, was abducted after interviewing Iraqis near Baghdad University on Feb. 4. She was apparently being held by a group called "Mujahedeen Without Borders," the name that appeared in the videotape. There has been no word on her fate since then.
Nearly 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq over the past year. Most have been freed, but at least 30 have been killed. |
