Nairobi, Kenya - The Al Shabaab, the Al Qaeda-linked Somali militants, said Wednesday they would shortly execute French hostage, Dennis Allex, after a daring military operation to free him failed in Somalia.
The Al Shabaab militia said it reached the verdict to execute the French agent, seized more than three years ago, to avenge the French policy of carrying out military operations in support of friendly African regimes.
'We have reached a unanimous decision to execute the French Intelligence officer,' the terror group said in a statement.
French troops attempted to daringly rescue Allex, who was training Somali soldiers on intelligence gathering techniques, in July 2009, when he was seized in Mogadishu and taken to an Al Shabaab military base.
The Al Shabaab blamed the hostage and the French government's spy agencies of being 'willfully uncooperative' in meeting the demands of the group for a prisoner swap before attempting to rescue the hostage without considering the consequences.
Al Shabaab, which has been linked to other military groups, including those involved in the Northern Mali, said it was executing the hostage to avenge the killings in Somalia and to retaliate the French decision to launch an operation in Mali.
French hostages are among thousands of people held hostage in Somalia by groups of what is considered organised criminals who have fully-fledged mechanisms of laundering ransom millions into property markets across Africa and Europe.
Hostage negotiations have mostly involved the exchange of as much as US$ 12 million but the frequency of the kidnappings forced authorities, including Kenya, to launch a military offensive against the Al Shabaab in October 2011.
While the Al Shabaab accused the French of 'rushing into a risky operation' without considering the political consequences, it said it gave the French Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) time to negotiate to free its agent.
Another French hostage, Marie Dedieu, kidnapped from the Kenyan resort of Lamu on 1 October, died days after the launch of the Kenyan operation, Linda Nchi, code name for defending the nation.
The operation has drastically weakened Al Shabaab's administrative structure and left it with a little more than potent force to threaten softer targets. But its force strength remains unknown since its top commanders fled.
The group claimed in a statement it had interrogated Agent Allex, who it said posed as a journalist to gather intelligence on Al Shabaab.
It also claimed that it foiled the French rescue mission through a series of falsified intelligence briefs to the French, which it said also sent several contacts with electronic gadgets to try to locate the hostage.
The battle at Bulo-Marer, where the hostage was originally thought to have been held, lasted for an initial three hours and the group said 'the rescue operation failed because of an intelligence failure'.
Pana 17/01/2013