French hostages ‘alive’ as headscarf ban enforced

HOPES grew last night for the release of two French journalists held hostage in Iraq, with France’s foreign minister saying he had received word that they were alive.

One of their employers also said that their kidnappers have handed them over to another group.

Jean de Belot, managing editor of Le Figaro newspaper, said the militants who claimed to be holding the reporters, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, had handed them over to an Iraqi Sunni Muslim opposition group.

“That is an extremely positive point,” Mr de Belot said. “But we must be prudent. We can’t let ourselves be absolutely reassured.”

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier also sounded cautiously optimistic.

“According to the indications which were given to us and we are studying at this moment with caution, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot are alive and are being well treated,” he said at a news conference in Amman.

French envoys held crisis talks in Iraq and Jordan yesterday in a desperate bid to free the reporters.

Mr Chesnot, 37, of Radio France International, and Mr Malbrunot, 41, reporting for the daily Le Figaro, were last heard from on August 19 as they set off for the southern city of Najaf. Their Syrian chauffeur also vanished.

Islamic radicals kidnapped the pair to force France to scrap its controversial school ban on Islamic headscarves and other religious symbols.

France’s academic year got off to a quiet start yesterday as the ban went into effect, with the hostage crisis in Iraq taking the heat out of the debate.

“The first day of school is going smoothly,” said Hanifa Cherifi, member of an education ministry crisis team set up to monitor implementation of the “secularity law.”

Cherifi said there were “no indications that students have refused to remove conspicuous religious insignia,” which are prohibited under the law passed by the centre-right government of President Jacques Chirac in March.

Though the law does not single out any specific faith - Jewish skullcaps, large Christian crosses and Sikh turbans are banned along with the Islamic headscarves - many in France’s five-million-strong Muslim community believe thehijab worn by teenage girls is the main target.

Education Minister Francois Fillon said the resumption of classes was “marked by fraternity, the idea that all children are treated fairly and equally.”

Meanwhile, in Iraq, an al-Qaida-linked militant group released a video purportedly showing the killing of three Turkish hostages and warning foreigners to leave the country.

Al-Jazeera reported that it had received a video from a militant group in Iraq linked to al-Qaida that showed three Turkish hostages being killed.

The station said it had a statement claiming responsibility from Tawhid and Jihad, a group tied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant held responsible for a string of bombings, kidnappings and other attacks in Iraq.