ABUBAKAR SHEKAU
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French woman kidnapped by Somali militants dies
Marie Dedieu, who was taken from Kenyan holiday resort to Somalia, has died, French foreign ministry says
Marie Dedieu, who was believed to have been kidnapped by Somali al-Shabab militants. Photograph:
A Frenchwoman kidnapped from her beach house on Kenya's northern coast by Somali gunmen nearly three weeks ago has died, the French government said on Wednesday.
The French authorities said they heard Marie Dedieu, 66, had died via intelligence officers dispatched by Paris to the region to seek her release. However, they said they had no information as to when she died or in what circumstances.
"Mrs Dedieu's state of health, uncertainty over the conditions of her detention and the fact that the kidnappers probably refused to give her the medication that we sent her lead us to believe that this tragic outcome is unfortunately the most likely," the foreign ministry statement said.
Dedieu used a wheelchair, had undergone two years of cancer treatment and also had heart problems for which she needed four-hourly medication. Her immune system was described by those who knew here as "very weak".
"It's a barbaric, violent act of utter brutality," foreign minister Alain Juppè said.
Earlier Nicolas Sarkozy had described the kidnapping as incomprehensible.
"How can anyone be so barbaric as to take a woman like this hostage?" he said.
A former journalist, she had been left tetraplegic by a car accident in her early 30s, but still spent eight months of the year in the Lamu region.
Colette Bel, a Frenchwoman who visits the area and knew Dedieu, told Paris Match: "Lamu was her paradise. It did her the world of good."
The newly elected Socialist party presidential candidate, François Hollande said on Twitter that he was "profoundly shocked" to learn of Dedieu's death.
On Wednesday the French foreign office demanded "the return of our compatriot's remains without delay and without conditions".
It re-stated the indignation of the French government in the face of "the total absence of humanity and the cruelty the kidnappers have shown".
"We want them identified and brought to justice," the ministry said, adding that the authorities wished to convey their "profound sadness" to Dedieu's family.
Dedieu was a leading figure in the French feminist movement in the 1970s.
Since the mid-90s, she has lived in a rented house on Manda Island in the Lamu archipelago, a popular tourist destination, for several months a year.
She had a Kenyan partner, and was well known and liked by locals as well as foreigners working in the hospitality industry.
If the kidnappers thought they had snatched a wealthy foreigner, they must have been disappointed.
She lived in a modest single-storey thatched home, known as a "banda" in Swahili, and constructed in a traditional African village style with no windows or internal doors, on a small parcel of land on the beach.
A group of armed men
kidnapped her before dawn on 1 October, carrying her to a waiting speedboat before heading up the coast to Somalia.
The alarm was quickly raised, and a private plane belonging to a resort owner tracked the gunmen from the air. But the Kenyan navy, which has a base in Lamu, was slow to respond, and the kidnappers escaped to Somalia.
The abduction was the second in a matter in weeks in northern Kenya. In September
a British woman was kidnapped a beach resort in Kiwayu, and her husband was shot dead. The woman is being held captive in Somalia.
The Kenyan government has blamed the Somali Islamist group
al-Shabaab for the kidnappings, though the militants have strongly denied this. Pirates and criminal gangs, rather than rebels, have been responsible for the vast majority of previous kidnappings in or around Somalia. Large ransoms are usually paid.
After two Spanish aid workers were kidnapped from the
Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya last week, the
Kenya government launched a land and air offensive into southern Somalia, where al-Shabaab is strong.
The initial justification for the operation – Kenya's first significant cross-border military campaign since independence – was that the army was hunting down the kidnappers.
But with more than 1,500 Kenyan troops advancing far into Somalia, it appears the goal is far more ambitious: to create a thick buffer zone along the border that will eventually be held by forces allied to the weak government in Mogadishu.
Though the move seems to have support in Kenya, it is risky. Al-Shabaab has warned it will strike targets in Nairobi, and is likely to use its guerrilla skills to attack Kenyan forces in
Somalia
