Help us or we die, French pair plead in Afghanistan

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Help us or we die, French pair plead in Afghanistan

Reuters


Saturday, April 14, 2007

KABUL — Two French aid workers kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan have made a tearful appeal to Paris for help, saying otherwise they will be beheaded and their heads returned to France.

“Please do what they want,” said a Frenchwoman who identified herself as Celine in a video CD obtained by Reuters today.

“Do what they request because they told us that they would kill us. They would, they would cut our head (off) and send it back to France.”

Celine is wearing what appears to be a white headscarf in the black-and-white footage, which runs a little over three minutes. The two French aid workers spoke in English.

She wept as she talked. The Taliban said the video was taken yesterday and details embedded in the CD showed it was made then.

Celine and male French companion Eric, working for Terre d’Enfance, were kidnapped on April 5 with three Afghan colleagues in Nimroz province, a thinly populated desert region between Iran and Helmand, Afghanistan’s southern opium centre.

The Taliban have not detailed any ransom demands and the French pair did not say what was needed for their release. Terre d’Enfance focuses on education and other projects for children.

The video also shows the three Afghan hostages, named by the French pair as Hazrat, Rasoul and Hashim, crouching and blindfolded, with a man whose face was hidden by a traditional black and white Afghan scarf standing over them with a gun.

Eric, with a light beard and looking drawn, said:

“I ask to the prime minister, to the parliament, to the president, to answer all the demands of the Taliban.

“If you don’t answer, then we will be killed.”

PRESSURE

Last month, a journalist from the Italian daily La Repubblica was kidnapped with his driver and translator in Helmand. Daniele Mastrogiacomo was freed after President Hamid Karzai released five Taliban prisoners under pressure from Rome.

The Italian’s Afghan colleagues were beheaded.

In Paris, the French government said it was studying the video, but made no comment. Karzai last week ruled out any more prisoner swaps with the Taliban.

But the presidential palace said today Karzai had been phoned by his French counterpart asking for help. Karzai assured Jacques Chirac Afghanistan would do all it could.

“President Hamid Karzai assured President Chirac that the relevant Afghan institutions will spare no effort in securing the release of the kidnapped French nationals and their Afghan colleagues,” the palace statement said.

The Taliban are also holding five Afghan health officials taken in a separate incident and have threatened to kill one, a doctor, unless more insurgent prisoners are released.

The Mastrogiacomo deal, coming after reports that another abducted Italian journalist was freed late last year for a $2 million ransom, has been bitterly criticised in Italy and Afghanistan as a move that will encourage more kidnappings.

Last year saw the worst fighting since the strictly Islamist Taliban were ousted from power by U.S.-led forces in 2001 and many analysts and security experts expect this year to be worse.

(Additional reporting by Jon Boyle in Paris and Firouz Sedarat in Dubai and Shams Dawoodzia and Reuters Television in Kabul)

Reuters
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