Paul Michaud, Arab News

PARIS, 20 April 2004 — Alexandre Jordanov, the 45-year-old French journalist who was released from captivity last week after spending three days and three nights as a hostage in Iraq, says that his captors “demanded $1 million” for his release, but that the amount was “finally reduced to “$10,000.”

The remarks were made during an interview on Sunday afternoon on French TV. Jordanov was filming a report for French television when he was captured on April 11.

He said, “They started by asking me for $1 million, a sum that I told them I didn’t have and which I thought that President Chirac didn’t either. Finally they reduced the amount to $10,000,” a sum that he suggested was paid but he did not reveal by whom.

This information was not emphasized in the interview since it deals with a subject that French authorities may wish to avoid — namely that ransoms might be paid for hostages.

Jordanov noted that he had often been “humiliated and intimidated” during his captivity — for example “by having to go to the toilet with at least two armed men, holding their Kalashnikovs on me.”

As for the United States presence in Iraq, he said that a second major finding of his imprisonment was that “the Americans no longer control the country, perhaps a few major crossroads and urban areas, but you have to realize that Iraq is basically an agricultural country and that the lion’s share is no longer under US control.”

The only positive aspect of his detention, he admitted, was in regard to food. He noted that they showed traditional Arab hospitality with the result, “they let you eat all you wanted, and indeed tried to make me eat more than was good for me.”