Ransom Readied in French School Hostage Crisis

The ordeal of six French nursery school children and their teacher being held hostage by a hooded man claiming to be armed with explosives entered its third day in this wealthy Paris suburb today as officials made preparations to meet the man’s ransom demand for $18.5 million in money and gold.

Police, who say they believe the same man may have exploded a bomb in an underground parking garage earlier this month, made no move to intervene with force.

The man, wearing gloves and a black hood that revealed only his eyes, seized the class of 20 children, ages 3 and 4, along with their teacher Thursday morning. After demanding a telephone, television and radio to monitor news coverage of the event, he released 14 of the children Thursday but refused to release any more hostages Friday in negotiations with Neuilly Mayor Nicolas Sarkozy.

Sarkozy, who is also budget director and chief spokesman for the French government, left the large, landscaped campus of the Commandant Charcot school several times for brief periods Friday to consult with Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, who commands the special police units on the scene.

At 5:30 p.m. Friday, a small white delivery van carrying three blue enameled footlockers drove up the normally quiet street of Paris’ most affluent suburb and entered the school grounds.

The Agence France-Presse news service reported that the footlockers contained the money in French bills of small denominations and gold ingots, as demanded by the hostage taker, whom witnesses described as calm and well-spoken.

France has never before encountered a hostage incident in its nationwide school system. Television networks and newspapers devoted most of their coverage to the event Friday, offering interviews with child psychologists who detailed the long-term negative effects on young child hostages.

They have also profiled the 30-year-old teacher, Laurence Dreyfus, a married mother of a 20-month-old child. Dreyfus, a first-year teacher, was allowed to leave the classroom Thursday night to pick up food as the toddlers slept. She could have escaped but insisted on returning and by doing so has become an instant heroine to the public, which has followed the episode with intense interest.

Charles Hardy, prefect (governor) of the Hauts-de-Seine region on the western edge of Paris, praised Dreyfus for shielding the children from the reality of what was happening.

“They don’t know what’s going on,” said Hardy. “The teacher told them it’s a game. She’s shown a rare courage.”

Psychologists said the teacher’s calm actions and her efforts to maintain a relatively normal rhythm of activities for the children may help them recover from the trauma of the incident if it ends peacefully.

“By respecting the rhythm of life of the children,” said Denis Puech, a child-care psychiatrist at Paris’ Saint Antoine Hospital, “alternating naps, games, meals, activities and rest, she is keeping a normal atmosphere. The group togetherness avoids the development of anxiety among the kids.”

The children have received regular meals from the outside. On Friday, they were visited in the classroom by a pediatrician serving with the fire department. The anguished parents of the six are all at the scene, camped in another wing of the school.

The stocky hostage taker has repeatedly said he has no interest in harming the children, although he told officials he would rather “die than be taken alive.” Communicating with them by fax, he has threatened to use the children as shields to make his escape. Police said he had provided them with an elaborate list of instructions for his escape, complete with diagrams.

He has been going without sleep, drinking coffee to stay awake.