A French engineer held hostage
by Islamist militants in northern
Nigeria for almost a year has
escaped, President Francois
Hollande said on Sunday.
Hollande gave no details about
the escape, but a Nigerian police
official told Reuters that Francis
Collomp had slipped out of his
cell and managed to find a
motorcycle taxi which took him to
a police station.
Collomp, who is i
n his sixties, was
seized when about 30 gunmen
stormed his compound on 19
December in the northern
Nigerian town of Rimi, close to
the Niger border where al-Qaida’s
North African wing, al-Qaida in
the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM),
operates.
“The president expresses his
gratitude to the Nigerian
authorities, with whom French
authorities have collaborated
closely on this decisive action,”
Hollande’s office said in a
statement on Sunday.
Arriving in Israel for a state visit,
Hollande later said Collomp had
freed himself and that the French
foreign minister, Laurent Fabius,
who arrived in Israel with
Hollande, was flying to Nigeria to
receive him.
Nigerian police commissoner
Olufemi Adenaike said Collomp
had been moved to the town of
Zaria, in northern Nigeria, in the
past three months and had fled
from there. A diplomatic source
told Reuters that Collomp was
weak and had lost a lot of weight
but was not injured.
Collomp’s wife, Anne-Marie, told
French radio that Hollande had
called her to inform her her
husband was free. “I have heard
that he has escaped, I say bravo
my husband, bravo,” she said.
In September, Collomp – an
engineer at French renewable
energy firm Vergnet – asked for
help in a three-minute video
posted on a jihadi website.
Ansaru, the militant group that
kidnapped him, said soon after
his abduction that he had been
taken in retaliation for France’s
military action against jihadi
insurgents in Mali and its ban on
wearing the full-face veil.
Britain has put Ansaru on its
official “terrorist group” list,
saying it is aligned with al-Qaida
and was behind the kidnapping
of a British national and a Italian
who were killed last year during a
failed rescue attempt.
The group is thought to have
loose ties to the better-known
Islamist militant sect Boko Haram,
which has killed thousands in a
four year insurgency focused
mostly on Nigerian security forces,
religious targets and politicians.
Collomp’s release comes just
weeks after four French hostages
kidnapped in Niger by AQIM,
were released on 29 October after
three years in captivity.
Seven other French nationals are
being held hostage in Syria, Mali
and Nigeria, including French
priest Georges Vandenbeusch,
who was kidnapped in northern
Cameroon last week and is
believed to be held in Nigeria.
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