New Hostage Video, More Violence From Nigeria Sect

Haruna Umar and Sunday Alamba
Associated Press, Maiduguri, March 18, 2013

A man who appears to be a French hostage held by Islamic extremists has appeared in a video filmed three days ago, in the second recording released since he and his family were kidnapped on Feb. 19 in northern Cameroon, as authorities fail to stop the spiraling violence of Nigeria's Boko Haram insurgency.

The video's audio airs a man's voice that identifies himself as Tanguy Moulin-Fournier. He says that his family is being held by the Islamic radical sect known as Boko Haram which wants all its members freed, especially women and children held in Nigerian and Cameroonian custody.

Boko Haram has been waging a campaign of bombings and shootings across Nigeria's north. They are held responsible for more than 790 deaths last year alone, and dozens more since the beginning of this year.

Two secondary schools were attacked on Monday alone, leaving a teacher dead and three girl students injured in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the sect's spiritual home, military spokesman Sagir Musa said. He blamed the Boko Haram sect and said local security forces had killed three of its members in a counterattack.

Hours later, at least one explosion hit a crowded bus park for long distance travel in the northern city of Kano. People were killed and injured, said National Emergency Management Agency spokesman Yushau Shuaib, who couldn't immediately provide a casualty figure. It was not clear if there had been one or multiple explosions, said Shuaib, or if the explosion had been an accident or a bomb. However, residents' suspicion immediately fell on Boko Haram, as the blast occurred in a Christian enclave in a predominantly Muslim city.

Nigerian presidential spokesman Reuben Abati said in a statement Monday that Nigeria "will not be stampeded, for any reason whatsoever, into abandoning its unrelenting war against terrorists in the country."

However, the French hostage-taking from a neighboring country would further internationalize an insurgency which has imposed a reign of terror on northern Nigeria for more than two years.

"We lose force (strength) every day and start to be sick; we will not stay very long like this," Moulin-Fournier says in the recording.

The family has been held hostage for 25 days, he says in a shaky voice, giving the only date indication on the recording. The family comprising of Tanguy, his brother, his wife and their four children was kidnapped outside a national park in Cameroon's Far North region.

The video was not immediately available, but a media source who viewed it says it shows the Moulin-Fournier family, including the four children. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

"They will not be able to get the seven hostages unless they free our members," one of the family's captors says in the recording, speaking in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north.
This is the second video showing the family since another video was posted on YouTube three weeks ago. But their health and spirits appear to be deteriorating.

"The living conditions are very hard," Moulin-Fournier said, "(heat), water, food, sleep, life in the desert, et cetera--conditions even more difficult for the white men that we are who are not used to the African (heat) and for the kids."

The video comes days after French foreign minister Laurent Fabius visited Nigeria and Cameroon as part of a campaign to get the hostages freed. He said that, in addition to the family of seven, extremists also hold an eighth French national who had been working on a renewable energy project in northern Nigeria. It is not clear which extremist group currently holds the French engineer kidnapped on Dec. 19.

Fabius said he had been working with Nigerian and Cameroonian authorities using an approach that he described as "determined and discrete."\

The hostage situation is exacerbated by the recent killings of other foreign hostages held by a splinter group of Boko Haram.

European diplomats said those seven foreign workers who had been kidnapped from northern Nigeria on Feb. 16 had been killed by their captors after a video showing some of the corpses was made public. The killings stoked fears about the extremists' readiness to execute their captives in a country better known for quick ransom kidnappings.

However, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan told journalists Monday that all seven hostages, including two Lebanese nationals, one citizen each from the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy, and two people now believed to have been Syrian, may not be dead. Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, who visited President Jonathan in Abuja Monday, said that he still had hopes that the hostages would be freed.

"And that if they are killed," Jonathan said, "I insisted (during his meeting with Lebanese counterpart) that we must get their corpses."

Associated Press reporters Yinka Ibukun in Lagos, Salisu Rabiu in Kano and Bashir Adigun in Abuja contributed to this report.

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Francis Ogboro, an executive who oversees Dana Air speaks to journalist at a press conference in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, June 6, 2012. A Nigerian airline whose airplane crashed in the country’s largest city, killing 153 on board and more on the ground, defended itself Wednesday against growing public criticism, saying its own chief engineer died on the doomed flight. Ogboro said. “No airline crew would go on a suicide mission.”

Chinese businessmen wait to identified bodies at the Lagos state university teaching hospital in Lagos, Nigeria, Tuesday, June 5, 2012.

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Students of university of Lagos protest with the poster of late Vice chancellor Adetokunbo Babatunde Sofoluwe, following the renaming of the University by Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, May 30, 2012. Tuesday, President Goodluck Jonathan said the school would be renamed Moshood Abiola University in honor of a political prisoner who died in jail over a decade ago. The major university in Nigeria has shut down campus for two weeks after thousands protesting a proposed name change for the institution closed a major bridge leading into business center of the country's largest city. The University of Lagos urged its students to head home for the hastily announced holiday Wednesday as students and unemployed youths took over the city's Third Mainland Bridge that morning. The protest disrupted traffic throughout the city. Image: Sunday Alamba/AP

Students of the University of Lagos barricade a major bridge during a protest following the renaming of the University by Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, May 30, 2012.
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Motor bike taxis join students of the University of Lagos protest following the renaming of the University by Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, May 30, 2012.

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LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Commandeered buses blocked off the main bridge linking Nigeria's largest city Wednesday, stranding thousands of commuters as protesters took over the 12-kilometer (7½-mile) span to demonstrate against the country's president. Their rage didn't focus on rampant government corruption, increasing terrorist attacks or massive unemployment in Africa's most populous nation. Instead, it came down to simply a name.

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RELATED ARTICLE: ITA OKO ISLAND, Nigeria (AP) — The prison, cut out of the dense jungle that engulfs this island outside Lagos, never officially existed in records, though critics of Nigeria's military rulers were locked up here decades ago in harsh conditions.

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In this photograph, documents and keys from a broken desk are seen on Ita Oka Island outside of Lagos, Nigeria. Ita Oko Island in Nigeria holds a prison that never officially existed in records though it housed critics of the nation's military rule. It now sits in ruins as a haunting reminder of past abuses of power, yet Africa's most populous nation still plans to open another classified facility to hold and interrogate members of a radical Islamist sect. Image: Jon Gambrell/AP

In this photo, an abandoned water storage tank is seen at the former prison known as Tekunle on Ita Oko Island outside of Lagos, Nigeria. The prison is cut out of the dense jungle that engulfs this island outside of Nigeria's largest city, but it never officially existed although many critics of the nation's military rule were kept here. Ita Oko Island allowed Nigeria's military governments to have opponents disappear into the swamps of the Lekki Lagoon at a camp accessible only by boat and helicopter. Date: May, 11, 2012. Image: Sunday Alamba/AP

In this photo taken Tuesday, May, 8. 2012, showing the remains of a burnt down part of a former prison known as Tekunle on Ita Oko Island outside of Lagos, Nigeria. The prison is cut out of the dense jungle that engulfs this island outside of Nigeria's largest city, but it never officially existed although many critics of the nation's military rule were kept here. Ita Oko Island allowed Nigeria's military governments to have opponents disappear into the swamps of the Lekki Lagoon at a camp accessible only by boat and helicopter.

Nigeria: A Disappearing Lagos

The Church Missionary Society Bookshop house and tower (CMS Bookshop) was built in 1973 by G Cappa and designed by Architects Godwin and Hopwood with sun screening and windows to reduce the heat load on the air-conditioning. It is still one of the few buildings in Nigeria to have a facade correctly designed to exclude direct sunlight between 9am and 5pm with a consequent astonishing 75% saving in air-conditioning loading on the office floors, in Lagos, Nigeria. What is predicted to become the most populous city in Africa was initially ignored by the Portuguese explorers who first dominated it, served as a hub for a brutal slave trade and once held the hope of a continent that even now struggles to overcome its colonial past. Date: April 01, 2012. Image: Sunday Alamba

Commercial buses park in front of the gothic style designed Chrit Church Cathedral, which incorporates Brazilian details and motifs with the foundation stone laid by Prince Edward in 1925, but was not completed until 1948. It's imposing tower dominates the road junction and this part of Marina in Lagos island, Nigeria. Date: April 01, 2012. Image: Sunday Alamba

In this photo taken Sunday, April. 1, 2012, Doherty Villa, was built in 1895 by liberated slaves returned from Brazil and known as the Amaro who tended to settle on the island in Lagos, Nigeria. What is predicted to become the most populous city in Africa was initially ignored by the Portuguese explorers who first dominated it, served as a hub for a brutal slave trade and once held the hope of a continent that even now struggles to overcome its colonial past. Image: Sunday Alamba