French reporters Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who will mark their 100th day in captivity this weekend, are now the longest-held Western hostages in Iraq, as French diplomatic efforts to free them continue to flounder. The two journalists were abducted on August 20 as they were driving to the holy Shiite city of Najaf. The reporters' exact whereabouts remain unknown but the little information available on their fate indicates they could still be held in Latifiyah, a lawless Sunni rebel enclave 40 kilometres from Baghdad.
An Egyptian trucker who was released on November 13 said he had been briefly detained in a room in Latifiyah next door to two Frenchmen and he believed they were still there when he was released. "I was kidnapped on October 20 and held afterwards at a house in Latifiyah where two Frenchmen were in the next room and whose voices I heard," he said. "I heard the kidnappers talking at night in another nearby room. One of them said 'Let's take the Frenchmen to Fallujah,' but another one said 'no, it is too dangerous'." During their assault on Fallujah, US marines found the two journalists' Syrian driver, Mohammed al-Jundi, who was kidnapped at the same time but had been detained separately since early September.
"An' tonight, on zee 'Nightline', 'France Held Hostage', day one hundreed, as President Chirac he does not'ing. I am Francois Koppel reporting." |