France Increasing Pressure on Syria

[Annie]

http://www.expatica.com/source/site...ce+suspects+Syria+link+in+reporter%92s+kidnap

France suspects Syria link in reporter’s kidnap

PARIS, March 2 (AFP) - French intelligence services were Wednesday studying two videos of a reporter taken hostage in Iraq - one of which was broadcast the day before - amid suspicions that Syria had links to those holding her, media said.

The front pages of all of France's dailies were given over to the latest video, initially shown by Italian television station Sky-Italia Tuesday, which showed Florence Aubenas, senior correspondent of the Liberation newspaper, looking gaunt and desperate.

"Please help me. My health is very bad. I'm very bad psychologically also," Aubenas was seen pleading, in English, her knees drawn up to her chest and sitting in front of a plain reddish background.

"This is urgent now. Help me! I ask especially Mr Didier Julia, the French deputy. Please Mr Julia. Help me! It's urgent. Mr Julia help me!" she said in the 50-second video.

Technical experts at the DGSE foreign espionage service and other branches of the defence ministry were analysing the video to try to determine when and where it was taken.

The government and Liberation said an earlier video, contained on a CD-ROM, had been received last week.

Liberation said Wednesday that that video, which lasted 40 seconds, was not made public at the demand of authorities, who claimed to be observing a request by the kidnappers. It showed Aubenas against a black background, essentially making the same statement in English - but without the reference to Julia.

In both cases, there has been no indication as to who is holding Aubenas, nor any mention of demands or of Aubenas's Iraqi interpreter, Hussein Hanun al-Saadi, who disappeared with her in Baghdad on January 5.

But the Julia reference has concerned and puzzled French officials and the media - and raised speculation that Syria might have a link to the hostage-takers.

Julia, an Arabic-speaking MP in President Jacques Chirac's ruling UMP party, is seen as having links to Damascus.

A former archaeologist, he has been to the Middle East many times and had ties to senior Baath party members in Saddam Hussein's deposed regime.

Many of those ex-Baathists are involved in the insurgency groups in Iraq, and Syria is suspected of financing some of them.

Julia, though has been largely ostracised in the UMP after heading a failed mission last September in Syria to free two other French reporters who had been taken hostage in Iraq in August.

Those journalists, Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro newspaper and Christian Chesnot of Radio France Internationale, later condemned Julia as "beneath contempt" for jeopardising the official bid which eventually succeeded in freeing them in December.

The government denied having paid a ransom.

Julia said he was willing to help in the Aubenas case, but to do so the government would first have to lift a criminal investigation against his team launched after the failure of his first venture.

Late Tuesday, on France's TF1 television, he said of the kidnappers: "These are people who know me, and probably people I know."

Asked if there could be a Syrian link to the kidnapping, Julia said he did not think so, stating: "The Syrians are traditional friends of France."

Relations between France and Syria have become strained of late, however, because of French and US sponsorship of a UN resolution demanding Syria withdraw troops from Lebanon and stop interfering in that country's affairs.

"Among the experts following the matter, the coincidence of the open crisis over Lebanon ... and the abduction gives rise to many questions on what role might be played by Syria, with whom Didier Julia has close contacts," Liberation said.

French authorities have told Julia not to mount any mission alone but rather to keep himself at the "disposition" of the government.

Justice Minister Dominique Perben said Wednesday that "nobody should act alone ... A collective and professional approach is needed."

On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Michel Barnier - who was especially scathing of Julia's freelance escapade last year - said: "Concerning the deputy who was named (in the video), I believe he himself said that he was at the disposal of the French authorities. We are going to make the appropriate decisions after analysing the video."

© AFP

 

[Johnney]

well shit you know this is only because they arent getting the bribes they like to line their pockets with.