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Paris,
France, August 29, 2009 – The French agent who escaped the clutches of
his Somali captors arrived back in Paris on Thursday as insurgents
holding his partner said they would put him on trial as a spy.
A top member of the al-Qaeda-inspired Shabaab group holding the second
agent said the man would be tried under sharia law.
"We know that the other French secret agent has gone free without
judgment, but I tell you the one we are holding still waits for Islamic
sharia court that will decide his fate as we already said," he told AFP
on condition of anonymity.
"He cannot escape. We keep him in a heavily guarded place, and he has
very little chances of escaping," he added by telephone.
Somali Information Minister Dahir Mohamud Gele said the government was
working for the release of the second French agent.
The French authorities maintain that the two men were on an advisory
mission to the Somali transitional government when they were snatched
from their Mogadishu hotel on July 14. Several witnesses said they had
presented themselves as journalists.
The escaped agent, who has given his name to interviewers as Marc
Aubriere, flew out of Mogadishu to a French military base in neighboring
Djibouti and is due to return to Paris later on Thursday, a French
official said.
Aubriere said he had escaped while his captors slept and made his way
across Mogadishu in darkness to the safety of the presidential palace,
guided by the stars. He had fresh scratches on his arms from the cactus
he scurried through during his escape, a New York Times correspondent
who interviewed him said.
Aubriere had been held for six weeks by the Hezb al-Islam militia group,
which has joined forces with the Shebab in a bid to overthrow Somalia's
weak transitional government.
Both Hezb al-Islam and Somali government officials said on Wednesday
that Abubriere had not escaped but had been released after a ransom had
been paid.
The Shebab is seen as the more radical of the two groups. Hezb al-Islam,
the groups which was holding Aubriere, is a more political movement led
by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a former ally of President Sharif Sheikh
Ahmed.
Each group took one of the hostages shortly after they were abducted.
Somali government moves to gain the release of the second hostage are
hampered by its lack of control over much of the Horn of Africa country,
following a major offensive by the insurgents which began in May.
The hardline groups want to topple Sharif and are fiercely opposed to
the presence of African Union peacekeepers backing the transitional
federal government.
In recent months, armed Somali gangs have carried out scores of
kidnappings, often targeting foreigners or Somalis working with
international organizations to demand ransoms.
Three aid workers were kidnapped in northern Kenya in late July, while
two journalists - a Canadian woman and an Australian man - have been
held hostage for a year.
Source: AFP, August 28, 2009
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