Kidnapped Frenchwoman’s death said to be ‘a terror act’

A DISABLED Frenchwoman kidnapped off a Kenyan resort island appears to have died in captivity in Somalia, prompting Kenya to call the death an act of terror against the East African nation and France.

Nairobi said it sent 1,600 troops into Somalia last weekend to hunt al-Shabaab militants because of the kidnapping of the French woman, plus Briton Judith Tebbutt and two Spanish aid workers from Kenya over the last six weeks. The nation’s tourism minister has said that the invasion is meant to push Islamist militants away from Kenya’s tourist destinations.

Somali gunmen snatched Marie Dedieu, 66, in the middle of the night from her resort island home near Lamu on 1 October. Ms Dedieu, who used a wheelchair, had cancer and required special medications several times a day, medicine her captors did not take with them.

French officials said yesterday that Ms Dedieu’s health and the fact her kidnappers “probably refused to give her the medication we sent her” was likely to have led to her death. The foreign ministry said her death had not been confirmed but was the most likely situation.

Abdullah Fadhil, the property manager at Ms Dedieu’s residence in Lamu, said: “We are so, so sad. We have lost a mother of this village. We have not lost a foreigner. We have lost a mother of the community.”

France’s foreign ministry said only that unspecified “contacts” told French officials that Ms Dedieu had died, but the date and circumstances of her death were not immediately known.

The Kenyan government offered its condolences and said Ms Dedieu died while in al-Shabaab captivity. Kenya maintains al-Shabaab is behind the recent kidnappings, though some analysts have instead blamed pirates or criminals.

The Kenyan government statement said: “The kidnapping and detention of Marie Dedieu was a terror act not only against her, but also against Kenya, her home country France and the entire world.”

After a weekly Cabinet meeting with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, foreign minister Alain Juppe said Ms Dedieu’s death “isn’t totally confirmed but is more than probable”.

“Madame Dedieu was a gravely ill 66-year-old woman, afflicted with cancer [and] quadriplegic,” he said. “Seizing a woman in this state is an act of barbarity.”

French officials have demanded that Ms Dedieu’s remains be handed over.

Residents in Lamu remembered her as a kind woman.

“She was my friend,” said Beatrice Halua. “She knew how to live with everyone: good people, bad people. She was a nice person. She had so many friends.”

Kenyan military forces, meanwhile, continued their movements into Somalia, in pursuit of al-Shabaab militants. Kenya’s military claimed it had killed more than 70 militants, but offered no evidence of that claim.

Kenya’s tourism minister, Najib Balala, said yesterday that Kenya sent in troops to push militants back from the country’s tourist destinations, such as Lamu, because they were creating instability and affecting the economy. Mr Balala said the government was responding to the attacks.

He added: “Security has been upped in the country and we made sure that we don’t entertain any unscrupulous characters in our country.”

On 11 September, British tourists David and Judith Tebbutt were attacked by gunmen from Somalia as they enjoyed a holiday at a secluded Kenyan resort.

Mr Tebbutt, 58, was shot dead and his wife, 56, was kidnapped.

Mrs Tebbutt, a deaf social worker from Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire, has not been seen since and is believed to be held near the Somali port of Kismayo, controlled by al-Shabaab.