By Guillaume Lavallee
KHARTOUM, Nov 26, 2009 (AFP) - A shadowy armed group in the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur said on Thursday that it abducted three French aid workers from the neighbouring Central African Republic and Chad to try to secure a change in French policy in the region.
Reached by satellite telephone, the self-styled spokesman of the Freedom Eagles of Africa, Abu Mohammed Rizeigi, said France was being punished because it had failed to change tack when the group held two other aid workers, a Frenchwoman and a Canadian, earlier this year.
"We are not targeting the non-governmental organisations, we are targeting France," Rizeigi said of the abductions of International Committee of the Red Cross agronomist Laurent Maurice and two staff in the CAR of relief agency Triangle, whose names have not been released.
"We want France to change policy in the region."
In a separate telephone call with AFP on Thursday, Maurice said that he was bearing up despite his ordeal now in its 17th day.
The two Triangle staff were kidnapped late on Sunday evening from Birao, a town in the lawless region monitored by peacekeepers of the United Nations Mission in the CAR and Chad (MINURCAT) near where the CAR's borders with Sudan and Chad meet.
A local elder, Mahamat Salah Amadou Birao, told AFP that the kidnappers had headed off to Sudan with their hostages.
"We kidnapped the Triangle staff in the CAR," Rizeigi told AFP, adding that he was not with the hostages as he spoke.
Rizeigi said his group was the same one which held two staff of French relief group Aide Medicale Internationale (AMI), Claire Dubois of France and Stephanie Jodoin of Canada, for 25 before releasing them on April 29.
"We kidnapped the two girls," he said. "At the time we asked France to change policy in the region but nothing was done."
In April, the kidnappers gave their name as the Falcons for the Liberation of Africa. The group's motives have remained shadowy ever since that abduction.
Over the past three years, the armed groups in Darfur -- rebels and pro-government militias alike -- have splintered into two dozen separate factions, some of them engaging in little more than banditry with no clear political aims.
France has difficult relations with the Sudanese government as it hosts a leading Darfur rebel leader -- Abdel Wahid Nur, who heads the hardline faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement -- and has troops across the border in both Chad and the CAR.
But it was unclear whether the appeal for a change of policy was genuine or cover for a ransom demand.
The ICRC has already said that it received a ransom demand for a second staff member who was abducted inside Sudan earlier this month.
Gauthier Lefevre, who holds joint British-French nationality, was kidnapped on October 22 in West Darfur near the Chadian border and his captors later demanded a million euro (1.5 million dollar) ransom to free him, a demand that the ICRC said it rejected as a matter of policy.
Maurice was kidnapped on October 9 in the Chadian village of Kawa, about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the Sudanese border where he was assessing harvests.
"I have been deprived of my liberty for 17 days but I'm bearing up," he told AFP by satellite telephone on Thursday, adding that he had been able to contact his family through the ICRC.
"I am in Chad," he added, without elaborating, contradicting the account of a senior Chadian official who had said that the kidnappers had taken their hostage into Darfur.
The spate of abductions has hit relief efforts in the region. Six organisations suspended their operations in eastern Chad after Maurice's kidnapping depriving 37,000 people of aid.
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Received by NewsEdge Insight: 11/27/2009 08:16:35
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