Released hostage reveals kidnappers' gifts

Former hostage Florence Aubenas says her captors gave her gifts of two rings and a bottle of perfume when they released her at the weekend after more than five months of captivity in Iraq.

The veteran French reporter was to give more details about her ordeal at a press conference in Paris later today.

She told her newspaper, Liberation, that one of her guards said, "We have prepared some presents for you" just before she was freed on Saturday. "They gave me two rings and a bottle of perfume."

Her captors also returned her handbag, which still contained her identity papers and money, and served her tea and roast chicken, she said.

For the first time since her kidnapping on January 5, her captors also gave her a chair to sit on, she said.