BAGHDAD, June 12: French journalist Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi interpreter Hussein Hanun were freed on Sunday after a five-month kidnapping in Iraq. “She was thinner but surprisingly vivacious and smiling,” French ambassador Bernard Bajolet said after a French air force jet carrying Aubenas took off from Baghdad airport for the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

“She got through this ordeal with exceptional courage.”

Iraqi celebrations of the release were quickly followed however by a report that the decomposed bodies of 20 executed men had been found near Nahrawan,.

Hanun enjoyed a tearful reunion with his family in Baghdad in the morning, while Aubenas landed later at a base outside Paris on board a French air force jet, where she was greeted by her family and President Jacques Chirac.

Aubenas, a writer for the centre-left daily Liberation, and Hanun were kidnapped after they left her Baghdad hotel on Jan 5, triggering a massive campaign in France and elsewhere in Europe for their release.

“I want to express to Florence Aubenas and Hussein Hanun our happiness and that of the entire nation to know that they are free and will soon be returning to us,” French President Jacques Chirac said following her release.

She told reporters that she had been kept in “severe” conditions in a basement, with her hands and and ankles bound and a blindfold over her almost all the time. French authorities did not give any details on the circumstances of her release, but denied that a ransom had been paid.—AFP