The death has been confirmed of French national Marie Dedieu.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the announcement from their offices on Quai d’Orsay. Taken hostage on the first of October, Dedieu was 66 years of age and was kidnapped by a paramilitary group from the tourist archipelago of Lamu off the coast of Kenya and was then taken to Somalia.
The Quai d’Orsay statement from this Wednesday 19th of October read: “The contacts through which the French government were seeking to obtain the release of Marie Dedieu have informed us of her death without giving us any details as to the time or circumstances,” said ministry spokesman Bernard Valero in a press communique. “The state of Ms Dedieu’s health, the uncertainty of the conditions of her detention, the fact that the attackers probably refused to give her medicines that we sent, leads us to fear that this tragic result was unfortunately the most likely the most probable.”
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs says that the family and friends of the victim were informed. The Ministry expressed indignation “at the total absence of humanity and the cruelty that the perpetrators displayed… The French government expresses its profound emotion, its great sadness and its solidarity with the family and friends of Marie Dedieu,” continues the Quai d’Orsay statement, which goes on to repeat its “indignation at the total absence of humanity and of the cruelty that the perpetrators displayed with our compatriot” et to call for “the immediate and unconditional return of Ms Dedieu’s remains.”
Marie Dedieu was suffering from cancer and from a cardiac condition and is believed to have had limited mobility. When she was kidnapped from her home on the island of Manda in Kenya, during the night of September 30th/ October 1st, her attackers didn’t bring the wheelchair that she used to get around.
The French national was held first in the the small coastal village of Ras Kamboni, on the Somalian side of the border, before being brought to a nearby location, still in the Somalian region of Lower Juba near the Kenyan border, according to local sources.