Ex-Hostage Sent to Jail in France in Custody Case
Jacqueline Valente, freed in Beirut in April after more than two years as a hostage, was sentenced Wednesday to two months in a French prison for taking two daughters from her ex-husband in defiance of a custody ruling.
Prosecutors had requested only a one-month suspended sentence during the hearing in Toulon, but the presiding judge, Andre Fortin, decided to impose the harsher penalty.
He said that Valente, 32, had committed a “premeditated kidnaping” in 1983 and expressed irritation that she refused to answer questions about the mysterious circumstances of her own abduction.
Valente was allowed to remain free pending an appeal. She was sentenced to six months in prison, four of which were suspended.
The case dates to August, 1983, when Valente refused to return her daughters--Marie-Laure and Virginie--to their father after one of their regular visits with her.
No word was heard about Valente and the girls until November, 1987, when the Revolutionary Council of Fatah--a Libyan-backed Palestinian group led by terrorist Abu Nidal--declared it had taken them hostage, along with five Belgians also aboard a yacht in the Mediterranean.
The two girls were freed in 1988, and Valente, her Belgian companion, Fernand Houtekins, and their own daughter, Sophie-Liberte, were freed April 10.
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