Report from Monaco states that President Francois
Hollande on Thursday urged the French not to endanger their lives after a
priest was kidnapped in Cameroon despite repeated warnings he was in a
dangerous area.
Hollande also promised that France would
do all it can to secure the release of Roman Catholic priest Georges
Vandenbeusch, who was kidnapped by armed men near the border with Nigeria.
“We are doing everything possible
for this priest to be found and to give him back his freedom,” Hollande said
during a visit to Monaco.
“He was practising his faith in an
area he knew to be dangerous. Nevertheless, everything must be done and will be
done so that he can be released without delay,” he said.
“I would also ask all of my
compatriot who live or travel in what I would qualify as high-risk areas to do
nothing to put their lives in danger or to expose themselves to kidnappings,”
he added.
French Foreign Minister Laurent
Fabius told AFP that Vandenbeusch, 42, had been told “several times” that the area
he was working in was dangerous.
The foreign ministry said it had
designated the area, from where seven members of a French family were kidnapped
by Boko Haram in February and held hostage for two months, as a dangerous zone
prone to militancy and kidnappings.
Armed men abducted a French priest
in northern Cameroon, officials and witnesses said Thursday, nine months after
Nigerian Islamists kidnapped a family in the same border region.
Georges Vandenbeusch, a Roman
Catholic priest who moved to the area two years ago, had repeatedly ignored
warnings by the French authorities that the region was dangerous.
The French foreign ministry said he
was snatched overnight from his parish base near the town of Koza, about 30
kilometres (20 miles) from the Nigerian border.
“We are working with Cameroonian
authorities to secure his release,” it said in a statement.
A separate church statement said
Vandenbeusch was 42 and had been working in the area, where the Islamist Boko
Haram group has operated in the past, since September 2011.
“He had been told several times that
the area is dangerous,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told AFP during
a visit to Morocco.
“We had expressly advised him not to
stay on but he thought he should remain there,” Fabius added.
The ministry said it had designated
the area, from where seven members of a French family were kidnapped by Boko
Haram in February and held hostage for two months, as a dangerous zone prone to
militancy and kidnappings.
“Investigations are being conducted
to verify the circumstances in which he was kidnapped and to establish the
identity of his abductors,” it said.
A nun who worked with Vandenbeusch
told AFP the priest had been kidnapped from his house in the Nguetchewe by
armed men who spoke English.
Although Cameroon is predominantly
French-speaking, English is spoken in several areas, notably near the Nigerian
frontier.
Vandenbeusch “was kidnapped around
11:00 pm (2200 GMT) by armed men,” Sister Francoise told AFP by telephone.
“They spoke English. We think they
came on foot. They were not hooded. We do not know what they took from his
house. They were alone with him.”
She said the kidnappers “asked us
for money”.
Kidnappers on motorbikes
Another priest, Father Henri
Djongyang, said the kidnappers first went to the nuns asking if they had euros
and then to the priest’s house, less than 100 metres (yards) away.
He said Vandenbeusch was locked in
his room but the attackers “smashed open the door and ransacked everything.
They were certainly looking for money because the father had a safe in his
office. They dragged it to the living room but could not carry it away.”
They then took the priest “in the
direction of Nigeria,” he told Europe 1 radio.
In another interview to Radio France
Internationale, he said a young man had seen the kidnappers make the barefooted
priest walk through the village before fleeing with him on motorbikes.
“According to a village chief, there
were motorcycles that passed through and the moment the motorcyclists crossed
the border they shouted with joy,” Djongyang said.
The latest kidnapping brings to
eight the total number of French hostages held worldwide.
Four others are being held in Syria,
one in Nigeria and two in the Sahel region on the southern fringes of the
Sahara desert.
In February, a Frenchman employed by
gas group Suez in Yaounde was kidnapped together with his wife, their four
children and his brother while visiting a national park just miles from the
Nigerian border.
They were then taken to neighbouring
Nigeria and held by Boko Haram, an Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group blamed for a
string of deadly attacks since 2009 in an insurgency in northern Nigeria.
The family was released in April.
France denied paying a ransom or launching a military operation to secure their
freedom.
Boko Haram has in the past called
for the creation of an Islamic state in Nigeria. It is believed to be made up
of many different factions, some of them hardcore Islamists who would resist
any concessions to Nigeria’s secular government
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