BAGHDAD, 2 March 2005 — A French journalist seized in Iraq seven weeks ago has made a desperate appeal for help in a videotape released by insurgents yesterday. Separately, an Al-Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for Monday’s massacre of job seekers in Hilla, calling them apostates.
It is believed to be the first tape of French journalist Florence Aubenas to be released and would be the first confirmation that the 43-year-old is still alive since her abduction on Jan. 5.
“My name is Florence Aubenas. I’m French. I’m a journalist with Liberation,” she said in English on the undated tape, looking distraught and with her hair bedraggled. She was dressed in a gray sweatshirt and black trousers.
“My health is very bad. I’m very bad psychologically also,” she said, staring intently at the camera as she held her knees up to her chest in front of a dark red background.
Aubenas is believed to have been snatched from her car as she was driving near her hotel in central Baghdad. She was taken along with her driver, Iraqi Hussein Hanun Al-Saadi.
On the tape, she made an appeal to a named individual. “I ask particularly for the help of the French deputy Didier Julliard. Help me Mr. Julliard, help me. It’s urgent. Help me, Mr. Julliard,” she says.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said France was “very concerned” about Aubenas and “very mobilized” to obtain her release.
“We’re pursuing our investigations, we’re obviously very concerned and the government is very mobilized to secure the release of Florence Aubenas and Hussein Hanun Al-Saadi,” Raffarin told a press conference in Paris.
In its statement posted on a website, Al-Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq claimed responsibility for the Hilla massacre. “A lion from our martyrdom brigade plunged into a gathering of apostates in front of a police and National Guard registration center, blowing up his loaded car and killing 125 apostates,” said the statement.
“The blood of the apostates was helping the Americans. They had sold their religion and their honor,” it added.
A suicide bomber detonated his vehicle near a crowd of people seeking jobs in Hilla, killing 125 people and wounding 130. It was the single bloodiest attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
On the political front, a Kurdish party spokesman rebuffed a proposal by interim President Ghazi Al-Yawar that his successor also should be a Sunni, saying that distribution of key roles in the next government should not be based on sectarianism.
“Iraq consists of two main sects, namely the Arabs and the Kurds. These two sects should share the two sovereign posts in the state,” said Azad Jandian, spokesman for the Kurdistan Patriotic Union party (PUK) in Suleimaniya.
Kurds have proposed that PUK leader Jalal Talabani be considered for the role of president. “Distribution of roles should not be based on sectarianism,” Jandian added.
“Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq should agree to keep the Kurds, who preferred to stay united within Iraq, happy,” he said.
— Additional input from agencies
