Somalia: Al-Shabaab seeks ransom for body of 66-year-old, wheelchair-bound French hostage who died in captivity

Al-Shabaab finds a way to be even more evil than before: "The hostage-takers are even trying to sell the remains." "'Barbarians' demand ransom for Frenchwoman's body," from Agence France-Presse, October 20:

France on Thursday denounced as "barbarians" Somali kidnappers who were demanding a ransom for the body of a disabled Frenchwoman who died while in their captivity.

France said Wednesday that 66-year-old Marie Dedieu, who was kidnapped on October 1 and taken to Somalia, had died in the hands of her captors, most probably because they had refused to provide her medication.

Dedieu had been in a wheelchair and was suffering from cancer.

"The hostage-takers are even trying to sell the remains, it could not be more despicable," French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet told the i-TELE news network.

"Seizing a woman of this age, who is sick and paralysed, and not giving her her medication, allowing her to develop septicaemia from which she apparently died, and then proposing to sell her remains! These are not people who deserve anything but contempt," Longuet said.

"Those who committed this unspeakable act are nothing but a gang of barbarians," President Nicolas Sarkozy told AFP during a visit to a waste treatment centre in western France.

"This 66-year-old woman, gravely ill, who had cancer, who was quadriplegic, was kidnapped and not given the medication that she needed," he said.

"Barbarians who act this way, I don't think we can show much weakness towards them."

Longuet said the French military was not planning any action against the kidnappers in Somalia because they were "a small band, a small minority, an exception who dishonour this territory."

A gang of armed men seized Dedieu from Manda Island in Kenya's Lamu archipelago earlier this month and fled by sea to Somalia, fighting off an attempt by Kenya's navy to stop them.

France has demanded the immediate and unconditional return of her remains.

Kenya has blamed Islamist Shebab rebels in Somalia for a spate of recent kidnappings of foreigners and this week launched an unprecedented incursion into Somalia against the militants.

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15 Comments

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PJG | October 21, 2011 4:04 AM | Reply

I guess she was a cripplied pacifist, hoping for the best from mankind. Dear me, poor woman.

PJG | October 21, 2011 4:08 AM | Reply

I guess she was a cripplied pacifist, hoping for the best from mankind. Dear me, poor woman.

American Delight | October 21, 2011 4:15 AM | Reply

Calling people like this "barbarians" makes the news? It should only make the news when we fail to call these people barbarians.

RonaldB | October 21, 2011 5:09 AM | Reply

Being alive in the enemies hands is a pretty horrifying experience, and I can understand Israel freeing thousands of terrorists to get Gilad Shalit back.

With all due respect to the victim, once she is dead, there is nothing more to be done for her, and the finest memorial would be to kill as many of the kidnappers and their allies as possible.

Sometimes the old remedies are the best. Just like pirates, if any of the gang are captured, they should be executed immediately.

The question is, at what point do we actually endanger our civilized values by insisting on following protocol at every point, regardless of the threat or danger or the nature of our opponents?

ImNoDhimmi replied to comment from PJG | October 21, 2011 5:11 AM | Reply

Reports indicate Dedieu "lived in a modest beachfront house on Manda Island, in the Lamu resort archipelago on Kenya's northern coast. She was seized by gunmen in early October, thrown into a speedboat and taken to Somalia, a war-torn country that has become a piracy base." [LA Times]

I doubt she was a "crippled pacifist" as you so condescendingly put it, but an elderly woman in failing health trying to live out her days in a quiet resort town. She did not bring this barbaric treatment upon herself.

And now these brutes are attempting to collect ransom for her body, just when you think Al-Shabaab can stoop no lower.....

David | October 21, 2011 5:15 AM | Reply

Get in there & kick their ass Kenya. On the surface they are a strong Islamist force, I think if you scratch the surface & get down to some gritty fighting you will find them to be the typical scared little bully boy muslims you find all over the world, cowards except when they are all together acting like a pack of wild dogs.

ElderlyZionist | October 21, 2011 6:26 AM | Reply

Offer them money for the corpse. Then seize and hang everyone who shows up to collect.

rbla | October 21, 2011 6:35 AM | Reply

Will Sarkozy intervene to kick their butts the way he did in Libya? Let's think now - does Somalia have any oil? No. That answers the question.

fair_dinkum | October 21, 2011 6:42 AM | Reply

lowlifes. the lowest.

Jan | October 21, 2011 8:26 AM | Reply

"Barbarians who act this way, I don't think we can show much weakness towards them."

*Much* ?! It should be *none*. Even with this, the gutless politicians are *still* havering and wavering. What the *hell|* is wrong with them ?

BullShi'ite | October 21, 2011 5:43 PM | Reply

There seems to be no bottom to that barrel of barbarism...

mike ryan | October 21, 2011 6:52 PM | Reply

These thugs borrowed a page right out of the hadith and sirat "rasul allah."

Disgusting; but it's a vile act with many, many, preceding similar incidents in Islam's long and sad history.

dumbledoresarmy | October 21, 2011 8:07 PM | Reply

Just rewriting the original AP headline and lead paragraph, for greater clarity.

"Savage Muslims kidnap, murder non-Muslim Frenchwoman; demand ransom for body".

"France on Thursday described as barbarians a gang of Somali Muslim kidnappers who were demanding a ransom for the body of a disabled non-Muslim Frenchwoman whom they had kidnapped and then killed by wilful neglect".

dumbledoresarmy | October 21, 2011 8:16 PM | Reply

Something for M le President Sarkozy, and for every other non-Muslim authority that is having to deal with the Somali Muslim ghazi raiders, whether they call themselves members of 'Al-Shabaab' ('The Young Ones') or not, and whether those raiders are operating on land or sea.

From the original unexpurgated 1899 edition of Winston Churchill's "The River Wars" which deals with the campaign to defeat the slave-taking Mohammedan warlord 'the Mahdi' in Sudan in the 19th century.

"No terms but fight or death were offered.

"No reparation or apology could be made. .

"The red light of retribution played on the bayonets and the lances, and civilization—elsewhere sympathetic, merciful, tolerant, ready to discuss or to argue, eager to avoid violence, to submit to law, to effect a compromise—here advanced with an expression of inexorable sternness, and rejecting all other courses, offered only the arbitration of the sword."

Time that Somali Muslim thugs, raiders, kidnappers, sharia-pushers, bully-boys, pirates, woman-killers encountered that 'arbitration of the sword'.

Let the Foreign Legion go into Somalia alongside the Kenyan non-Muslim police and military and annihilate the known Muslim raider strongholds. Let the navies of a dozen non-Muslim states that have been bleeding money due to the massive disruption of trade routes and fishing industry caused by Somali Muslim pirates and kidnappers, blow every suspected pirate dhow to atoms on sight, drop bunker busters on suspected pirate gang boss palaces, and obliterate all known pirate coastal bases/ ports. Take no prisoners.

Do it without warning and afterward preserve total silence.

And if you have to do it again, in a month or six months or a year, do it again...harder.

London Jim replied to comment from dumbledoresarmy | October 22, 2011 4:06 AM | Reply

Sounds right dumbledoresarmy.

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