The French government was scrambling yesterday to verify a claim by al-Qaeda’s north African branch that it has executed a French hostage in Mali as a “spy.”
A man claiming to be a spokesman for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) told Mauritania’s ANI news agency late on Tuesday that Philippe Verdon had been executed on March 10 “in response to France’s intervention in northern Mali.”
“The French President [Francois] Hollande is responsible for the lives of the other French hostages,” the spokesman warned.
Photo: AFP
A French Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said Paris was trying to verify the report, adding that “we don’t know at the moment” whether it was reliable.
In all, 15 French nationals, including Verdon, are being held in Africa, with AQIM claiming responsibility for six of the kidnappings.
Verdon was seized on the night of November 24, 2011, along with Serge Lazarevic from their hotel in Hombori, northeastern Mali, while they were on a business trip.
The families denied that the two were mercenaries or secret agents.
Pascal Lupart, president of a support committee for the two men, said the ministry had informed the families early yesterday about the AQIM statement.
“They told the family to treat it with caution. Nothing is confirmed,” Lupart told reporters.
AQIM claimed responsibility for the kidnappings and in August last year, a video showing Verdon describing the “difficult living conditions” was released on a Mauritanian Web site.
Al-Qaeda groups often use the private ANI to make statements, which often turn out to be accurate.
The French hostages’ families have in recent weeks expressed growing fears for their loved ones in the light of France’s military offensive aimed at routing Islamists from northern Mali.
Verdon’s father, Jean-Pierre Verdon, had complained on Tuesday that the families were hearing nothing from the French authorities about the hostages.
“We are in a total fog and it is impossible to live this way,” he told RTL radio. “We have no information.”
Asked about France’s refusal to pay ransoms to kidnappers, Verdon senior said the families had no say in such “decisions of state.”
Paris deployed forces in Mali on Jan. 11 to help stop Islamist fighters who had controlled the north of the country since April last year from moving southward and threatening the capital, Bamako.
France now has more than 4,000 troops on the ground in Mali, of whom about 1,200 are currently deployed in the northeast, carrying out clean-up operations after driving out most of the rebels from the area.
The AQIM source cited by ANI refused to confirm reports that top Islamist rebels Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abdelhamid Abou Zeid had been killed earlier this month.
France has been carrying out DNA tests to determine whether the militant leaders are among those killed in recent fighting in Mali.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion