Hostage tells of her 'cell hell'

2005-06-14 19:07

Paris - Florence Aubenas, a French journalist freed in Iraq on the weekend after being held hostage for more than five months, said on Tuesday that she had been kept in a tiny basement with virtually no room to move.

The 44-year-old senior reporter for the Liberation newspaper, who was released on Saturday with her Iraqi interpreter, Hussein Hanun, said she did not know whether a ransom was paid, only that "no one ever spoke to me about money".

She said she was seized in Baghdad on January 5 by four armed men and was kept bound and blindfolded during her captivity, without any idea about who exactly was holding her or why.

At one point, unidentified men, who accused her of being a spy, questioned her.

Inside, she was ordered to strip and put on a sweat suit with "Titanic" written on it. She recalled no regular sounds in the cellar, other than the dripping of water from pipes.

Aubenas 'ordered to walk only 24 steps'

There, she spent more than five months - living, eating, sleeping and waiting on a thick foam mattress. She was ordered not to speak and walked a total of 24 steps each day - 12 each for two daily bathroom breaks.

In a peculiar twist, Aubenas said that was not held with three Romanian reporters who claimed to have been held with her during their 55 days of captivity in Iraq.

Aubenas said: "In this story, I think everyone has understood that the situation is delicate. I have a lot of respect for the account of the Romanians when they were freed."

She said: "I was with Hussein, that's what I can say."

Speaking on Tuesday in Bucharest, Romanian President Traian Basescu said their authorities had "collaborated very well with France and others" to obtain the release of the hostages.

De Villepin thanked world community

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking on Tuesday in parliament, thanked the world community and "Romania in particular" for their help in winning Aubenas' release, though he did not elaborate.

She said: "I don't say that today because French authorities asked me to - that's not the case."

Asked whether further information might emerge later, she said: "I'm not here to protect Agent 007."

"I don't get any joy doing that."

De Villepin praised Aubenas as "a woman of courage, who never lost hope".

Aubenas experience 'unimaginable'

She described meals of rice and hard-boiled egg sandwiches.

She said: "It was unimaginable that I was going to stay there for five months, without being transferred somewhere else."

She said that, at times, "I thought they were going to make an example of us before the election, by shooting us in the head on the internet", referring to the Iraqi parliamentary elections in January.

At one point, she recalled, she was taken before a small group of people - "a sort of trial" - with solemn, mature voices, while she was still blindfolded.

- AFP