By SCOTT SAYARE
Published: October 19, 2011
It was one of a series of similar attacks by Somali gunmen that have shaken Kenyan tour operators and security officials in recent weeks, and that Kenya has used to justify a military campaign into Somalia, begun on Sunday.
Addressing Parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister François Fillon spoke of the “indignation that is ours in the face of this act of cruelty, this act of barbarity,” noting that Ms. Dedieu was aged, disabled and sickly. “This speaks to the humanity of those who kidnapped her,” Mr. Fillon said. The government had tried to send medication to Ms. Dedieu, he and other officials said, but it was believed that her captors had refused to give it to her.
French news reports said President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke at length of Ms. Dedieu’s death at a Wednesday cabinet meeting, while the foreign minister, Alain Juppé, called her kidnappers “savages.”
In a statement announcing Ms. Dedieu’s death, Bernard Valero, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, called for her body to be returned to French authorities “without delay and without conditions.” The date and exact circumstances of Ms. Dedieu’s death could not be confirmed, Mr. Valero said.
Somalia’s prime minister, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, also expressed regret at Ms. Dedieu’s death, calling it an inhumane act that offended the dignity of the Somali people.
“We had all continued to work and hope for her release,” he said. “Unfortunately, Al Qaeda-linked extremists and pirates continue to threaten the security of Somalia, the region and the world. My government will work hard to bring those responsible to justice.”
Once a prominent feminist activist in France, Ms. Dedieu had lived for much of the past two decades on Manda and the neighboring island of Lamu, according to French media. They are on the Kenyan coast, about 60 miles south of the Somali border.
Gunmen from war-torn Somalia have carried out a spate of kidnappings in Kenya since September, apparently targeting Westerners and those affiliated with Western organizations there. The Kenyan government has cited those attacks as justification for its military incursion into Somalia, aimed at beating back the Shabab, the Qaeda-linked militant group that controls much of southern Somalia and that Kenyan authorities have blamed for the kidnappings.
In the Kenya military operation, hundreds of soldiers have crossed the border into Somalia, in addition to helicopter and artillery strikes against suspected Shabab positions. It is not entirely clear, however, that the Shabab are responsible for the kidnapping of Ms. Dedieu or for the abductions of an Englishwoman and two Spanish aid workers.
Many independent analysts believe the attacks to be at least partly the work of Somali pirate gangs, which have long taken aim at shipping and pleasure boats off the Somali coast, trading their hostages for ransoms worth millions of dollars. According to analysts, some of those groups have recently forged ties to the Shabab.
Elsewhere, eight French citizens are presently believed to be held hostage, according to the government. They are an intelligence agent captured in Somalia in 2009, four employees of the French nuclear company Areva kidnapped in Niger in 2010 and now held by Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate, and three aid workers who vanished this year in Yemen.
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