Al-Shabab lays Conditions for release of French hostage

The Islamic Movement Mujahidin of Al-Shabab has laid conditions for the release of security French advisers who were kidnapped on the 14th of July 2009 in Sahafi hotel in Mogadishu.

In fact the kidnapped agents were two, but one has escaped from the hands of Hizbul Islam sometimes last August, after a 5 hours walk from where was kept captive to the Somali Presidential palace.

"By the grace of Allah and under his guidance, the mujahidin succeeded in a major operation to capture an officer and agent of the French security services," an al-Shabab statement said.

In a decree in French language issued by the officials of the Mujahidin Al-Shabab movement on Thursday morning, concerning the release conditions for a French hostage in Mogadishu they said that there will be 4 conditions.

The 4 Conditions are as follows

1- The French government must stop both military and political support which they are offering to this apostate government of Sheikh Shariff, and withdraw all their security advisers in the country.

2-The French government should take out the infidel troops from our country, particularly the Burundians.

3- Should withdraw all security companies which are operating in Somalia.

4- Should withdraw all their warships in the Somali waters.

Al-Shabaab also said that France must release 'Muslim fighters' - without specifying which fighters and where they were being held - to secure the release of the advisor. Concerning the demand to release "mujahedeen prisoners" in return, the statement said a list of names and countries where they are held will be issued later.

France on Thursday immediately rejected the group's demands to stop supporting the Somali government, the AFP news agency reported. "It is a government that was founded in Djibouti with the support of a majority in Somalia," Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, told France Info radio. Together with its ally Hizbul Islam, al-Shabaab - which the US says has close links with al-Qaeda - has been battling to remove Western-backed President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

Al-Shabab recently vowed to retaliate against Western interests for a U.S.-led commando raid in rural southern Somalia that left six dead, including Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, one of the most-wanted al-Qaida operatives in the region. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, the 28-year-old Kenyan who was said to have built the truck bomb that claimed 15 lives at an Israeli-owned beach hotel in Kenya in 2002. He was also wanted over a simultaneous but failed missile attack on an Israeli airliner taking off from nearby Mombasa.

Kouchner reaffirmed that France "hopes to secure the release of this last hostage", but warned that "negotiations cannot just be carried out simply via the media".

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