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Alert

RSF appeals to religious leaders to help save kidnapped French journalists; urges Arab media to publicise Muslim opposition to kidnapping

(RSF/IFEX) - The following are two 29 August 2004 RSF statements:

Reporters Without Borders appeals to religious chiefs to help save kidnapped French journalists

Reporters Without Borders expressed "extreme concern" today at a threat to kill two kidnapped French journalists and called on the country's top religious authorities - the Sunni Committee of Muslim Ulemas and the Shiite leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani - to help free them.

The so-called Islamic Army of Iraq, which last week executed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, said on 28 August it would kill reporters Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot if the French government did not end its ban on Muslim headscarves in schools within 48 hours.

The group's video demand was broadcast by the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera. The film showed the two reporters, who said they were both in good health.

The worldwide press freedom organisation said it was "deeply shocked that journalists, who are protected civilians under the terms of the Geneva Conventions, are being used in this kind of blackmail."

Chesnot, a freelance journalist with Radio France Internationale and Radio France, and Malbrunot, a senior reporter with the dailies Le Figaro and Ouest France, disappeared on 20 August. Baldoni, of the Italian weekly Diario della Settimana, was killed when Italy refused the kidnappers' demands that Italy withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Reporters Without Borders asks Arab media to publicise Muslim opposition to kidnapping of two French journalists

Many Muslims and Islamic institutions called today for the release of two French journalists threatened with execution by kidnappers in Iraq. Reporters Without Borders appealed to Arab media to give the widest publicity to these calls.

The kidnappers have said they will execute the journalists - Christian Chesnot, a freelance journalist with Radio France Internationale and Radio France, and Georges Malbrunot, a senior reporter with the dailies Le Figaro and Ouest France - if the French government does not immediately lift its ban on wearing Muslim headscarves in French schools.

The head of France's Muslim Council, Dalil Boubakeur, deplored the kidnapping as "immoral and unspeakable," and Lhaj Breze, president of the French Union of Islamic Organisations, said he "very strongly rejected interference by any foreign force" in relations between the French government and Islamic institutions in France.

The Committee of Muslim Ulemas earlier called for the journalists to be freed. Spokesman Sheikh Abdessatar Abdeljawad urged the kidnappers to "preserve our friendship with France, which has opposed the occupation of Iraq." A spokesman for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood condemned "the kidnapping of civilians for any reason, especially when the issues raised do not concern the country where the kidnapping took place."

Reporters Without Borders appealed to the kidnappers to listen to the appeals from a range of Muslims and their organisations. It stressed that the two journalists knew the Arab world well, were very respectful of Islam and had never reported in a sensational manner.

The pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera broadcast a video on 28 August showing the two reporters saying they were in good health and were being held by members of the Islamic Army of Iraq, which said the pair would be executed if France did not lift the headscarves ban within 48 hours.