Released French hostage in transit through Cyprus

A MILITARY plane carrying French journalist Florence Aubenas, stopped over in Cyprus on Sunday as she headed back to France after spending the past five months hostage in Iraq.
“She looked fine. Very happy to be free and was a bit emotional,” said Christodoulos Pashiardis, Under-Secretary to President Papadopoulos.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste –Blazy flew out to meet Aubenas at a military airstrip in Paphos.

After switching planes, Aubenas flew back to France on a government jet and arrived home to an emotional welcome from President Jacques Chirac and family members.

Earlier, Chirac appeared on French television to thank French officials for their efforts to free Aubenas and her Iraqi assistant, Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi.

“At the end of a long, painful, 157-day captivity that was shared by all French people, they will at last return to their families and loved ones and I want to tell them of our joy,” Chirac said.
Details of their release were not provided, but former Foreign Minister, Michel Barnier, who worked on the case, said no ransom was paid to the pair’s captors.

Aubenas and al-Saadi were released on Saturday.

The 44-year-old reporter of French daily newspaper Lib?ration was snatched along with al-Saadi after leaving their Baghdad hotel on January 5. Little had been known about their fate since then. The last public sign that Aubenas was alive came in a videotape that emerged on March 1, in which the journalist was seen pleading for help.

Officials have never identified the kidnappers. Authorities in both France and Iraq suggest they were likely after money and that the kidnapping wasn’t politically motivated.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.