NIGERIA: French engineer Francis Collomp is seen in a Nigerian police station, having apparently escaped his kidnappers

Record ID: 236258

  • Title: NIGERIA: French engineer Francis Collomp is seen in a Nigerian police station, having apparently escaped his kidnappers
  • Date: 17th November 2013
  • Summary: KADUNA, NIGERIA (NOVEMBER 17, 2013) (REUTERS) *EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: QUALITY AS INCOMING* **CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY** FLAGS OUTSIDE POLICE STATION FLAG FLYING AT POLICE STATION EXTERIOR OF POLICE STATION SIGN READING (English): "HEADQUARTERS THE NIGERIA POLICE KADUNA STATE" SIGN WITH LOGO OF NIGERIAN POLICE VARIOUS OF PEOPLE STANDING ON BALCONY OF POLICE STATION NIGERIAN POLICE FLAG FLYING RESCUED, FRENCH MAN FRANCIS COLLOMP, SEATED VARIOUS OF SECURITY OFFICIALS ESCORTING COLLOMP OUT OF POLICE STATION INTO A VEHICLE VARIOUS OF PLATE NUMBER READING: "CORPS DIPLOMATIQUE - 46 CD 07" ENTRANCE TO POLICE STATION VARIOUS OF VEHICLES AND SECURITY VANS DRIVING OUT OF POLICE STATION POLICEMAN RUNNING TO THE VEHICLES PARKED OUTSIDE THE POLICE STATION VARIOUS OF DIPLOMATIC AND SECURITY VEHICLES DRIVING OFF EXTERIOR OF POLICE STATION (SOUNDBITE) (English) POLICE COMMISSIONER, KADUNA STATE COMMAND, OLUFEMI ADENAIKE, SAYING: "Close to eleven months, nothing paid, I don't know whether anything was demanded but nothing paid. Nobody yet. He was working with just a minute, he was working with Vergnet company of France. He's attached to Vergnet company of France, they came to do something in Katsina from where he was abducted, reasons best known to the abductors, eleven months ago, so since we're in November now it should be like September last year. Very good, yes, yes, he got out, he looked for an okada rider, he told the okada rider, "police, police " and the okada rider took him to the nearest police station." EXTERIOR OF POLICE STATION MAN AND ARMED POLICE WALKING EXTERIOR OF POLICE STATION
  • Embargoed: 2nd December 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA7EXN5P1WPFO2J5WFFFF52DR4K
  • Story Text: A French engineer who had been held hostage by Islamist militants in northern Nigeria for almost a year has escaped his jailers, President Francois Hollande said on Sunday (November 17).
    Hollande gave no details about the escape, but a Nigerian police official told Reuters Francis Collomp, who is over 60, had slipped out of his cell and managed to find a motorcycle taxi which took him to a police station.
    Collomp, an engineer at French renewable energy firm Vergnet, was seized when about 30 gunmen stormed his compound on December 19 in the northern Nigerian town of Rimi, close to the Niger border where al Qaeda's North African wing, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), operates.
    On Sunday he was seen leaving the police station in the central Nigerian city of Kaduna in a car from the French embassy.
    Nigerian Police commissioner Olufemi Adenaike told Reuters Collomp had been moved to the town of Zaria, in northern Nigeria, in the past three months and had fled from there. He also said no ransom had been paid.

    "Close to eleven months, nothing paid, I don't know whether anything was demanded but nothing paid. Nobody yet," he said.

    "He's attached to Vergnet company of France, they came to do something in Katsina from where he was abducted, reasons best known to the abductors, eleven months ago, so since we're in November now it should be like September last year," he added.
    Adenaike said Collomp had managed to flag down a motorcycle taxi (okada) and get to a police station.

    "He looked for an okada rider, he told the okada rider, "police, police " and the okada rider took him to the nearest police station," he said.
    A diplomatic source told Reuters Collomp was weak and had lost a lot of weight but was not injured.
    ? ? Four French hostages kidnapped in Niger by AQIM, were released on October 29 after three years in captivity.
    ? Seven other French nationals are being held hostage in Syria, Mali and Nigeria.
    ? 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 nearby 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 Qaeda 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 group Boko Haram, which has killed thousands in a four-year-long insurgency focused mostly on Nigerian security forces, religious targets and politicians.
    ? Boko Haram and splinter groups like Ansaru pose the biggest security threat in Africa's second biggest economy and top oil exporter, a major supplier to the Europe, Brazil and India.
    ? French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is accompanying Hollande on a state visit to Israel, will immediately fly to Nigeria to receive Collomp, the Elysee said.
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