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KIDNAPPING

Kidnapped French family taken to Nigeria

Kidnappers who seized seven members of a French family, including four young children, in Cameroon, have taken them across the border into Nigeria, Cameroon's government has said.

Published: 20 February 2013 08:25 CET
Kidnapped French family taken to Nigeria
FIle photo taken from a YouTube video in April 2012 apparently shows the leader of Boko Harem, Abubakar Shekau (centre), the group believed to be behind the kidnappings of a French family.

The family – a couple, their children aged five, eight, 10 and 12 and an uncle – were snatched  by six gunmen on three motorbikes on Tuesday.

The abduction of the holidaymakers comes amid fears of Islamist reprisals over France's military offensive against Al-Qaeda-linked groups in Mali.

"The kidnappers have gone across the border into Nigeria with their hostages," Cameroon's foreign ministry said in a statement aired on state television and radio.

The family were abducted early Tuesday at Sabongari, seven kilometres (four miles) from the northern village of Dabanga near the Nigerian border, the foreign ministry said.

They had earlier visited Waza National Park in the north of the country, according to a source close to the French embassy in Cameroon.

French energy group GDF Suez confirmed that one of its employees based in Cameroon's capital Yaounde had been kidnapped along with his family while holidaying in the north of the west African country.

French President Francois Hollande said during a visit to Athens that he had been informed of the kidnapping, suspected to have been carried out by a Nigerian "terrorist group that we know well".

"I note in particular the presence of a terrorist group, namely Boko Haram, in that part of Cameroon, and that's worrying enough," he said, adding at the time that France was doing everything possible to prevent the kidnappers from moving their prisoners to Nigeria.

A Cameroonian security source told AFP: "We have strong suspicions regarding the Islamist sect Boko Haram," which is blamed for killing hundreds of people in an insurgency in northern Nigeria since 2009.

A number of Boko Haram members are believed to have trained with Al-Qaeda militants in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in northern Mali.

The French embassy in Yaounde on Tuesday advised all French nationals in Cameroon's northern border areas to stay indoors.

Though it is the first abduction of Western tourists on Cameroonian soil, there have been several hostage-takings off the coast attributed to pirates, and in neighbouring Nigeria.

In December French engineer Francis Collomp was kidnapped in Nigeria in an act claimed by Nigerian radical Islamist group Ansaru, which is thought to be a Boko Haram splinter group.

On Monday Ansaru also claimed the kidnapping of seven foreigners in a deadly weekend raid on a construction site in northern Nigeria.

Claiming responsibility for that attack, Ansaru invoked "the transgressions and atrocities committed… by European nations in several places, including Afghanistan and Mali", singling out France in particular.

Tuesday's abduction brings the total number of French hostages abroad to 15 – all in Africa, with at least six being held by AQIM.

According to the US monitoring group IntelCenter, France is the Western country with the highest number of hostages being held, followed by the United
States, with nine.

Cameroon, a former French colony of 20 million people, has vast ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity and counts no fewer than 10 active rebellions.

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IMMIGRATION

‘I’d do it again’: Refugees reflect on their journey to Germany five years on

German Gracia Schuette and Syrian Aeham Ahmad both had their lives changed forever by Angela Merkel's decision in 2015 to leave Germany's doors open to hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Published: 30 August 2020 08:41 CEST
'I'd do it again': Refugees reflect on their journey to Germany five years on
Syrian pianist Aeham Ahmad while still living in a hostel in 2016. Photo: Daniel Roland/AFP
In August of that year, Schuette joined thousands of volunteers serving ladles of hot soup to exhausted migrant families arriving at Munich's main train station.
   
Having been held in Hungary after travelling the length of Europe, trains overflowing with refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan had begun arriving at the station in a seemingly endless convoy.
   
Ahmad was a passenger on one of them. The Syrian pianist with Palestinian roots arrived in Munich on September 23.
   
A month earlier, he had left Yarmouk, a sprawling neighbourhood in the south of Damascus, after swathes of the area were occupied by the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.
   
He left behind his wife and two boys, still too young to embark on such a perilous journey.
   
Now 32, Ahmad has built a career for himself that involves travelling all over Europe and as far afield as Japan to give concerts.
   
At the station in Munich, where the volunteers once served hot soup, a Covid-19 test centre now stands.
 
READ ALSO: 
 
 
Gracia Schuette stands at the main train station in Munich, the arrival place of many refugees in 2015. Photo: Christof Stache/AFP
 
'Gratitude'
 
Schuette, 36, says the experience changed her attitude to life and taught her “gratitude and the awareness that despite everything that happens in Germany, it is still a very safe country”.
   
Ahmad speaks to AFP from a train heading to the north of Germany, where he is due to give a concert.
   
He remembers his first days in Germany as a time of great confusion. Like tens of thousands of other Syrians arriving in the country, he had only one word on his lips: “Alemania!” — Germany.
   
“After I arrived in Munich, I was sent to several emergency reception centres and then to Wiesbaden” near Frankfurt, where he and his uncle were given a room in a hostel, he says in a mixture of English and German.
   
He remembers the “extreme kindness” shown by volunteers like Schuette — “that community of people who said, 'We have to help'”.
   
For Schuette, it was important to feel that she was “not just a spectator” watching events unfold but willing to “act decisively” by helping to distribute basic necessities or set up camp beds.
   
Today, she works as an administrator for a kindergarten. But she has maintained her commitment to helping refugees — so much so that she has even taken three young people into her home, one of whom still lives with her.
   
Having been granted refugee status a year after his arrival in Germany, Ahmad was joined by his wife and children.
   
The family have since moved to Warburg, a town in northwestern Germany, and seven months ago welcomed a new baby girl.
   
While still in Syria, Ahmad had made a name for himself on social media with videos of songs performed amid the ruins of his ravaged home country.
 
 
'No accent'
 
In Germany, he began to sing songs about homesickness, with the aim of raising awareness in his new country and the rest of Europe of “this stupid war” that has devastated Syria for more than nine years.
   
Today, he aspires to “bring cultures together, to create a dialogue between Eastern and Western music”.
   
Having given more than 720 concerts, he has at times felt exhausted. But “anything is better than living off state subsidies” as he did during his first months in Germany, he believes.
   
If Schuette could go back and do it all again, she would.
   
“I don't think I would be someone who just says, 'It's going to work out and everything's going to be great.' You have to be realistic,” she said, pointing to the difficulties of integration. “But there's no doubt about it: I'd do it again.”
   
Ahmad, too, avoids painting a rose-tinted picture of his story. His generation, he says, will be scarred for life by the horrors of war and the  difficulties of adapting to life in exile.
   
But there is pride in his voice as he reveals that his two sons already speak German “without the slightest accent”.
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