Rightist Le Pen Returns With 55 Hostages
Extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen returned home Thursday from Iraq with 55 freed hostages and accused unnamed Western governments of “wanting to keep hostages in Iraq in order to start a war.”
Le Pen, accompanied by several European Parliament members belonging to right-wing parties who accompanied him to Baghdad, landed in the eastern French city of Mulhouse aboard a special Boeing 727 Iraqi Airways jet.
The rightist leader refused to elaborate on his charge that some Western governments want the hostages to remain in Baghdad as an excuse to start a war.
But he again urged France to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia as soon as possible because “American interests, and not French or European interests, are involved.”
The 55 hostages who returned with Le Pen are citizens of 10 European countries, among them 21 British nationals, 14 Italians, seven Germans, three Irish and two Belgians.
Two Dutch citizens, three Danish nationals, two Greeks and a Swiss were also freed and returned with Le Pen.
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