French Boko-Haram Hostage Escapes In Zaria On Okada -

A French engineer held hostage by Islamist
militants in northern Nigeria for almost a
year has escaped, President Francois
Hollande said on Sunday.
Hollande gave no details about the escape,
but a Nigerian police official told Reuters
that Francis Collomp had slipped out of his
cell and managed to find a motorcycle taxi
which took him to a police station.
Collomp, who is in his sixties, was seized
when about 30 gunmen stormed his
compound on 19 December in the northern
Nigerian town of Rimi, close to the Niger
border where al-Qaida's North African
wing, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM), operates.
"The president expresses his gratitude to
the Nigerian authorities, with whom French
authorities have collaborated closely on this
decisive action," Hollande's office said in a
statement on Sunday.
Arriving in Israel for a state visit, Hollande
later said Collomp had freed himself and
that the French foreign minister, Laurent
Fabius, who arrived in Israel with Hollande,
was flying to Nigeria to receive him.
Nigerian police commissoner Olufemi
Adenaike said Collomp had been moved to
the town of Zaria, in northern Nigeria, in
the past three months and had fled from
there. A diplomatic source told Reuters that
Collomp was weak and had lost a lot of
weight but was not injured.
Collomp's wife, Anne-Marie, told French
radio that Hollande had called her to
inform her her husband was free. "I have
heard that he has escaped, I say bravo my
husband, bravo," she said.
In September, Collomp – an engineer at
French renewable energy firm Vergnet –
asked for help in a three-minute video
posted on a jihadi website.
Ansaru, the militant group that kidnapped
him, said soon after his abduction that he
had been taken in retaliation for France's
military action against jihadi insurgents in
Mali and its ban on wearing the full-face
veil.
Britain has put Ansaru on its official
"terrorist group" list, saying it is aligned
with al-Qaida and was behind the
kidnapping of a British national and a
Italian who were killed last year during a
failed rescue attempt.
The group is thought to have loose ties to
the better-known Islamist militant sect
Boko Haram, which has killed thousands in
a four year insurgency focused mostly on
Nigerian security forces, religious targets
and politicians.
Collomp's release comes just weeks after
four French hostages kidnapped in Niger by
AQIM, were released on 29 October after
three years in captivity.
Seven other French nationals are being
held hostage in Syria, Mali and Nigeria,
including French priest Georges
Vandenbeusch, who was kidnapped in
northern Cameroon last week and is
believed to be held in Nigeria.

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