A French journalist held hostage in Iraq for five months flew to Paris today after what the French ambassador said had been a dangerous operation to bring her home.
Florence Aubenas makes appeal
Florence Aubenas (44) was released together with her driver Hussein Hanun al-Saadi yesterday. The release emerged today after French officials revealed Aubenas was on board a flight to Cyprus where she would be met by French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy before boarding a government plane to take her to France.
"She looked fine. Very happy to be free and was a bit emotional," said Christodoulos Pashiardis, Under-Secretary to Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos.
She has is due to arrive in Villacoublay airport outside Paris where she will be met by President Jacques Chirac.
The reporter with French newspaper Liberationwas snatched along with her driver after leaving their Baghdad hotel on January 5th.
Little had been known about their fate since then, or the circumstances surrounding their release. Video footage of a distraught and fragile Aubenas was released by her captors on March 1 stin which she appealed for help.
A Romanian reporter, who was held hostage in Iraq for 55 days before being released last month, said for the first time on Sunday that Aubenas had been held in the same cell with her.
"Our mattresses were next to each other," Romanian journalist Marie Jeanne Ion told private television Antena 1.
"She was telling me all the time 'of course we won't die, of course we'll get out, they won't kill us'. If she wasn't there, we would have gone crazy," Ion said, her voice trembling.
She and two other Romanian journalists were kidnapped in Baghdad on March 28th. They were freed on May 22nd but declined talking about the circumstances in which they were held for fear this could endanger the lives of others.
"It wasn't easy at all. It was a dangerous operation for our people, extremely dangerous," Bernard Bajolet told France Inforadio, saying Aubenas had seemed thin but "full of life".
Aubenas's mother said Mr Chirac had informed her about her daughter's release on Saturday. "I thought I knew what the word happiness meant ... but it is so much better than I thought," Jacqueline Aubenas said.
Colleagues at Liberationbroke out in tears when they heard the news of the reporter's release.