This is a great story. Monsieur le Former Hostage kept his wits about him, used smarts and guts to escape, and then helped US troops look for his captors. Well done, sir, and welcome back.A French hostage who escaped at the weekend after five weeks of captivity in Iraq is to return to France on Monday evening, the French defence ministry said. Bernard Planche, a 52-year-old engineer, is due to fly into a military base in the city of Orleans, southwest of Paris, from 9pm, the ministry said. The Frenchman, who was abducted in Baghdad on December 5, escaped Saturday from a farmhouse west of the capital where he was being held, according to the US military.
Planche ran away Saturday from a farmhouse where he was held after his captors fled US and Iraqi troops who were conducting a search of a rural area on the western outskirts of the capital, the US military said. Planche got out through a window of the farmhouse after his captors suddenly abandoned the farm, Major Jim Crawford told AFP. "When he realised he was alone and saw US forces in the distance, he escaped through a window and ran down the road," Crawford said. "He had his hands in the air and, as he approached the US checkpoint, he took his shirt off to show he had no explosives on him," said the major from the 10th Mountain division.
US and Iraqi forces were searching the area after receiving information on the possible presence of arms caches and of a kidnapping ring in the area. The former hostage then insisted on staying with US troops for six hours to help them hunt for his former captors. Crawford declined to say of anyone was arrested, but he added that caches of weapons were found in the area.
The Frenchman, who was kidnapped from his home on December 5, apparently suffered a broken nose when his captors seized him. But after his release, he was smiling and joking with the soldiers. "He gave us information. He was able to recall all kinds of details," Crawford said. He was held in a half-basement whose window was covered over by a wooden plank, but he was allowed to keep a diary and to listen to a radio. His captors, calling themselves the Battalion of the Lookout for Iraq, in a video broadcast by al-Arabiya television had threatened to kill him if France did not "end its illegitimate presence in Iraq".
Planche was later debriefed by US forces before being handed over Sunday to the French Embassy from where he was expected to travel home to France. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin thanked "the American authorities who gave their support" in the form of a "security operation in the suburbs of Baghdad," according to a statement issued in Paris.