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Beheading of Frenchman in Algeria won’t deter France, Hollande says

Herve Gourdel is shown in a recent photo taken in the Nice, France, area before he was kidnapped and beheaded by a group linked to radical Islamic State militants.
(AFP/Getty Images)
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French President Francois Hollande said Wednesday that the decapitation of a French tourist by extremists in Algeria would not cause his country to abandon military action against Islamic State.

Hollande, speaking at the United Nations, said France would continue fighting terrorism despite the killing of Herve Gourdel, whose execution was shown on a video titled “Bloody message to the French government,” released by a group linked to Islamic State, according to the SITE Intelligence Group and Agence France-Presse news agency.

“The perpetrators of this odious crime must be punished,” Hollande said at the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

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Gourdel, 55, from the Mediterranean city of Nice, was abducted Sunday while vacationing in Algeria. A mountain guide and photographer, he was walking in the mountainous region of Kabylie when he was kidnapped.

The group called Jund Khilafah, or Soldiers of the Caliphate, had threatened to execute him within 48 hours unless France ceased airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Iraq. France joined the United States in airstrikes in Iraq last week, though it so far has not taken part in attacks on militant positions in Syria launched early Tuesday by the United States and five Arab allies.

The video released Wednesday showed Gourdel with four masked militants who read a statement in Arabic, criticizing the French intervention in Iraq.

After pushing him onto his side and appearing to hold him down, one of the men holds up a severed head.

“This is why the Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria have decided to punish France, by executing this man, and to defend our beloved Islamic State,” says one of the killers to the camera.

The killing came three days after an Islamic State leader urged people all over the world to attack citizens of Western states, including the U.S., France and “their allies.”

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“If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then ... kill him in any manner,” wrote Abu Muhammad Adnani, an Islamic State spokesman.

The message says that if supporters cannot find bombs to kill opponents they can “smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.”

The European Commissioner for economic affairs, former French government minister Pierre Moscovici, summed up the feeling in France after the news of the assassination.

“Horrified by the atrocious assassination of the hostage Herve Gourdel,” he wrote on Twitter. “Faced with terrorism and inhumane behavior, determination is the only response.”

The Algerian government also denounced an “odious and abject act ... carried out by a bunch of criminals,” in a statement in which it said it had used “all means humanly possible to liberate the hostage” and expressed its determination to combat terrorism “in all its forms.”

“It is with much pain and sadness that the Algerian government has learned of the shameful killing of the French citizen ... Herve Gourdel,” it said.

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Gourdel’s close friend Laurent Geny told Le Point magazine, “He was a profoundly good person, someone who was very human, who loved Maghreban [North African] culture.”

In an earlier video released by his abductors, Gourdel said he was being held by the Islamic State-affiliated group. Gourdel, who was filmed sitting between two armed and masked men, delivered a message to Hollande.

“This armed group has asked me to demand that you do not intervene in Iraq,” he said. “They are holding me hostage. I beg you, Monsieur President, to do all in your power to get me out of here.”

Gourdel had arrived in Algeria just a few days before he was seized, traveling on a tourist visa. He had rented a chalet at Tikjda, east of the capital, Algiers, with Algerian friends. He was hiking with two others and had spent the night at a ski lodge near Tikjda.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was among those who condemned the actions of Islamic State, saying he was appalled by such “barbarity.”

“France will never give in,” he said.

Willsher is a special correspondent.

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