Family of French hostage blasts Paris political quarrel

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2005

PARIS (AFP) — The family of a French journalist taken hostage in Iraq expressed outrage at a political spat sparked by a video released by the kidnappers calling for the intervention of a maverick French MP.

The mother of Liberation newspaper correspondent Florence Aubenas, Jacqueline, said she was frustrated by the row raging while her daughter remained in the hands of an unknown group who grabbed her and her Iraqi interpreter in Baghdad on January 5.

The abductors on Tuesday released a video in which Florence Aubenas, looking gaunt and desperate, made an "urgent" plea for help from Didier Julia, a French MP who has past ties to former members of Saddam Hussein's regime who are now believed to be active in the Iraqi insurgency.

Julia, a 71-year-old Arabic...