A French journalist who was held hostage for months by extremists in Syria said one of his captors was Mehdi Nemmouche, a Franco-Algerian man accused of killing four people at the Brussels Jewish Museum earlier this year.
French magazine Le Point on Saturday quoted the journalist Nicolas Henin as saying he was tortured by Nemmouche who last year joined jihadist rebels in Syria.
Henin was held for a time with American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, both beheaded by terrorists from the Islamic State group in recent weeks. He was released last April with other French journalists who had been held since June 2013.
Nemmouche has been in custody since his arrest in France soon after the Brussels attack in May. A couple of Israeli tourists, a museum vomlunteer and a museum employee were killed in the attack. He was extradited to Belgium last month where he will be tried later this month.
He and the other French journalists released in April described being held in about 10 underground places of captivity, mostly with other people.
Since their release on April 20, the four freed journalists have been interviewed numerous times about their ordeal by France’s DSGI intelligence service, French daily Le Monde reported. While some of former hostages have said only that “it was possible” that Nemmouche was among their captors, others, including Hénin, were more certain.
“When Nemmouche wasn’t singing, he was torturing [people],” Hénin said in an interview to be published next week in weekly magazine Le Point, for which he works.
“He was a member of a small French group whose arrival terrorised the fifty Syrian prisoners being held in nearby cells. Every evening, the blows would begin to rain down in the cell where I myself had been interrogated. The torture lasted all night until the morning prayer. The prisoners’ screams were sometimes met with yelling in French.”
Henin's lawyer, Marie-Laure Ingouf, confirmed that Nemmouche "was one of his jailers"."All the hostages confirm this. They lived alongside him for several months," she said.
A police source said that the freed hostages had recognised Nemmouche from photographs following his arrest.