Metro RFI Journalists' Murders Inspired French Nigeria Hostage's Escape - AllAfrica

Sandra Chiefe

Moderator
The French hostage who escaped Islamist kidnappers in Nigeria last weekend says that the murder of RFI's Ghislain Dupont and Claude Verlon inspired him to run away from his captors.

"It had a big effect on me," Francis Collomp said in one of the first interviews he has given since his escape from the Nigerian rebel group Ansaru. "But it also meant this: Ansaru is linked to Aqim [Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb] and they have never left a hostage alive. After the emotion, it gave me the energy to think about my escape again, and to study all the details that could make it happen."

The French engineer was taken captive 11 months ago and managed to escaped thanks to a mistake committed by one of his captors.

Collomp said, "He had to come into my cell to get to another sort of bathroom where water was stored in a large bin. Instead of locking the door and keeping the keys with him to wash himself before prayer, he left the keys outside the door. I let him start his ritual and I opened the door very softly. I had prepared a small piece of metal to push the keys out and I put it back into the lock so that the keys would not go back in. I had it all worked out."

For more on this story, visit: http://allafrica.com/stories/201311220481.html
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