Fresh Video Emerges of French Qaida Hostages

A fresh video emerged Saturday of four out of six French hostages held by al-Qaida in North Africa, all of them calling for negotiations to secure their freedom.

Shown separately in the video uploaded to the Mauritanian news website Sahara Medias, Pierre Legrand, Daniel Larribe, Thierry Dole and Marc Feret, who were abducted in Niger in September 2010.

"It's Wednesday, August 29, 2012. We have now been here for nearly two years," Larribe said, without disclosing where he was speaking.

All four called on their relatives, employers and the French authorities to help negotiate their release.

The separate shots had differing backgrounds and the armed men wearing turbans who stood behind each hostage were not the same.

Sahara Medias is one of the most reliable news sites in Mauritania, with a particularly strong network of sources in northern Mali, which was seized by radical Islamist groups from government forces five months ago.

The four were among seven people kidnapped from the uranium mining town of Arlit in northern Niger in September 2010 by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) while working for Satom, a subsidiary of the French nuclear group Areva.

Three of them -- a Togolese and a Madagascan and Larribe's wife Francoise -- were released the following February.

Legrand's grandfather Rene Robert told Agence France Presse after seeing the video that he and other relatives of the hostages had identified them.

"The hostages are tired, and even exhausted, but they are alive," he said.

Sources say that AQIM has demanded 90 million euros in ransom for the four, who in recordings released in April last year urged then French president Nicolas Sarkozy to withdraw French troops from Afghanistan in line with an AQMI demand.

Under Sarkozy's successor Francois Hollande, Paris has speeded up the withdrawal with 2,000 combat troops to be pulled out by the end of the year.

Two Frenchmen were also kidnapped last November by AQIM in Mali's northern town of Hombori, where they were working as geologists for a Malian company.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the hostages were not being held together.
Source http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/52874-fresh-video-emerges-of-french-qaida-hostages