Held 3 Years, French Hostages Return Home

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/world/europe/held-3-years-french-hostages-return-home.html

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PARIS — Free after years being held hostage in the deserts of West Africa, four Frenchmen, two with eyes downcast, two appearing joyous, stepped out of a plane and into a fine autumn morning south of Paris on Wednesday. Their families had gathered on the empty tarmac with President François Hollande. It had been three years, six weeks and three days since their kidnapping by Islamist fighters in Niger, and just hours since their release.

Television images showed Mr. Hollande waiting as the gangway lowered and shaking the hands of the first three men down: Marc Féret, 47, hidden beneath a scarf, beard and winter hat; Pierre Legrand, 28, his face blank; and Thierry Dol, 32, tall and beaming. Daniel Larribe, 61, seemed not to see the president and fell into the arms of his wife, Françoise, as his two grown daughters wept.

“It is an immense joy,” Mr. Hollande said shortly afterward, standing with the four men before two microphones on the tarmac at the military base at Villacoublay. “These are great French citizens, who did honor to France in their captivity.”

The four men — all workers at a uranium mine operated by a French nuclear company, Areva, in the northern Nigerian desert town of Arlit — were seized in the early morning of Sept. 16, 2010. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility, releasing several videos of the men over the course of their captivity. They were recovered in northwestern Mali, near the borders of Algeria and Mauritania, according to officials and news media reports.

Mr. Hollande thanked President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger, whose operatives conducted the negotiations that led to the men’s release. In an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien, Mr. Issoufou said the hostages had been held by groups linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and were recovered by Nigerian teams on Tuesday.

French officials insisted that the state had paid no ransom to secure the men’s release, but France is widely said to make payments through intermediaries in such situations. Reports on Wednesday from Agence France-Presse and Le Monde indicated that as much as 25 million euros, about $34 million, had been paid to the jihadists and intermediaries involved in the transaction. Areva said Wednesday that it had paid no ransom.

There was no assault and no ransom, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told TF1 television on Tuesday night, only an “initiative undertaken by the networks of President Issoufou which allowed for a liberation without a fight.” Mr. Le Drian and Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, were on hand in Niger to take charge of the former hostages on Tuesday.

Earlier this year, a former American ambassador to Mali, Vicki Huddleston, suggested that France paid about $17 million in 2011 to free three other people kidnapped by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. French officials denied that claim. Those three were kidnapped at the same time as the four Frenchmen released this week; Mr. Larribe’s wife was among them.

Northern Mali was overrun last year by a web of violent Islamist groups. France led a military offensive there early this year, driving the groups out of the principal cities of the region, Gao and Timbuktu.

On several occasions, French forces had apparently almost freed the four hostages in the course of fighting, according to Mr. Le Drian, who cited the men’s own accounts in an interview with RTL radio. The man believed to have overseen their capture, Abu Zeid, a commander for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, was killed in an airstrike amid fighting.

On the tarmac near Paris, after concluding his speech, Mr. Hollande stepped back to offer the microphone to any of the former hostages who might want it. They looked down and away.

“I think it’s not yet the time for speaking,” Mr. Hollande said, though he seemed to have thought that at least one of the men might want to say a few words. “I think we must let our four friends rest.”

They were then taken to a military hospital, where they were to be examined by doctors and debriefed by intelligence officers.