French spy Marc Aubrière escapes Gun City barefoot

Matthew Campbell
Saturday, August 29, 2009

THEY had taken away his shoes to ensure he could not get far were he to break out. So Marc Aubrière, one of two French intelligence operatives captured in Somalia by Islamic extremists, trained barefoot for weeks in his cell, walking back and forth across the concrete to toughen his feet in readiness for his escape.

French officials listened in amazement last week to Aubrière’s account of his dash to freedom through one of the most perilous cities in the world. After his debriefing in Paris, Aubrière, whose espionage colleague is still being held in captivity and faces execution, is expected to undergo medical tests and spend some time with his family.

In what seemed like a calculated affront to French national pride, the two secret agents, on a mission to train soldiers protecting Somalia’s transitional government, were snatched from their hotel in Mogadishu on Bastille Day – July 14 – by gunmen impersonating police.

“They knocked on the door,” said Aubrière, 40. “They had Kalashnikovs. That was that.”

The Frenchmen were taken away in a truck but it broke down after only a few hundred yards. It might have seemed farcical were it not for the swift arrival of fighters from Hizbul Islam, one of the most ruthless of the militia groups, who routinely kidnap and kill as part of the battle for control of Mogadishu.

They surrounded the truck and tense negotiations ensued. The Hizbul Islam fighters agreed to let the other gunmen go in exchange for the foreign prisoners.

When Al-Shabab, another Al-Qaeda-inspired militant group, got to hear about the valuable foreign hostages, it demanded a share of the booty, as Al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam have joined forces in a bid to overthrow the government. It was decided that Al-Shabab could have Aubrière’s colleague, identified only as Denis A, as their prisoner.

Aubrière, for his part, found himself alone in a windowless cell in a place he referred to as “the stronghold”. He insists that his captors treated him well and that they always ensured he had enough water. “They were young guys, but good guys,” he said. He was given “spaghetti, rice, meat from sheep, you know, the normal Somali stuff”.

He spent his time exercising and reading Deception Point by Dan Brown, the only book available. “I read it eight times,” he said. “I hate that book now.”

After a while he noticed that his captors had failed to lock both sides of the double doors to his room. “The other side was only locked from the inside,” he said. “They made a mistake.”

On Tuesday night he silently slipped back a bolt and opened the door. “You have a choice,” he said of his decision to run. “Either you wait and be killed. Or you try and be free.”

He tiptoed past sleeping guards, out onto the street, where he suddenly felt that he had leapt out of the frying pan and into the fire. The Somali capital is a notorious killing ground, a bullet-riddled ruin of a city that has been strafed and bombed through almost two decades of civil war.

Aubrière, a bearded white man, was bound to attract attention as a potential hostage worth millions in ransom. “Mogadishu is a kind of jail,” he said. “Everybody will try to catch you. You have no friend. Even the youngest people will try to sell you.”

His hope – justified, as it turned out – was that most people, fearful of being caught up in the nightly gun battles, would be locked away in their homes and that he would be able to walk undetected through the maze of streets before dawn.

Orienting himself by the stars, he set off in the direction of the government compound. He decided to walk, rather than run, to avoid attracting attention. Occasionally the quiet was shattered by gunshots. “ You just never stop walking,” he said, showing scratches on his arm from passing through cactus-filled vacant lots. “I was just telling myself: never stop, never stop walking, never stop. It’s just simple. It’s strength, that’s all.”

It took him five hours to reach the government compound, but his troubles were not over. He put his hands up in surrender but guards mistook the wild-eyed stranger for a foreign mercenary and held him at gunpoint at the edge of the compound for nearly an hour before finally realising he was an escaped hostage.

Like piracy at sea, the kidnapping of foreigners is a big source of income for gangs in Somalia. Four foreign aid workers and two Kenyan pilots kidnapped last year were released earlier this month, but two journalists – a Canadian and an Australian – have been missing for a year.

After Aubrière’s escape, a member of the Al-Shabab group holding the other French agent declared that he would be tried under hard-line Islamic law.

In France this was immediately interpreted as a threat of execution.

The French denied paying any ransom for Aubrière. But according to Somali military officials, negotiations had been under way in which Hizbul Islam was demanding £2.75m for each man. The French were apparently offering only £700,000.

Aubrière, who works for the DGSE, as France’s overseas intelligence agency is known, did not think that his escape would endanger his colleague. “If I had killed, maybe,” he said. “But if I had used a weapon I would have been caught immediately.”

His escape, he said, was “fair game”. Of his captors he added: “They played. They lost.”

Source: Times Online, August 29, 2009