France\u2019s Ex-President Sarkozy Goes To Jail<\/a><\/p>\nNuclear energy giant Areva, whose activities have since been taken over by Orano, has been accused of underestimating the threat of the Al-Qaeda jihadist group in the northern area of Niger, where it was mining.<\/p>\n
In 2010, armed men abducted seven Areva employees \u2014 five French nationals, a Togolese, and a Madagascan \u2014 in Arlit in northern Niger.<\/p>\n
One of the French captives, Francoise Larribe, was released five months later along with the Madagascan and Togolese nationals.<\/p>\n
The four other hostages were only released in October 2013, shortly after their detention was claimed by Al-Qaeda\u2019s North African branch, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).<\/p>\n
Magistrates ordered the trial in late September, accusing the French firm of carelessness and not implementing enough security measures, leading to its staff being taken hostage, the sources said.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s anti-terror prosecutor\u2019s office was against a trial and has appealed the decision, a judicial source said.<\/p>\n
The group\u2019s lawyer declined to comment, but the head of the firm\u2019s legal department in 2022 denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
An investigation revealed that the group had signed a deal with the Nigerien authorities for local troops to protect their mining sites, as well as the housing and movements of expatriate staff.<\/p>\n
Olivier Morice, a lawyer for one of the former hostages, Pierre Legrand, said it was \u201cunacceptable to note that despite numerous warnings to Areva, nothing was seriously done to protect employees on site\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 A French uranium mining company accused of partial responsibility for jihadists abducting some of its employees in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[167409,7795,2000,299,36,3933,167410],"class_list":{"0":"post-512040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-abductions","9":"tag-al-qaeda","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-mining","14":"tag-niger-republic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115401159040673825","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}