MOGADISHU, Somalia — Asked how he escaped from his Somali kidnappers Wednesday, a haggard, slightly gaunt French security consultant shrugged his shoulders, cracked a sly smile and pointed down.
“With my feet,” he deadpanned, hours after fleeing his abductors’ hide-out in Mogadishu and walking barefoot to the Somali capital’s heavily guarded presidential palace.
Government soldiers at first mistook the bearded, shaggy-haired stranger for a foreign fighter and held him at the edge of the compound for nearly an hour before realizing he was an escaped hostage, according to Mohamed Sheik, head of Somalia’s intelligence agency.
Marc Aubriere, 40, was kidnapped last month with another French security consultant from their Mogadishu hotel. The location of the second hostage was unclear Wednesday.
The men, employed by the French Foreign Office, were providing security and intelligence training to Somali soldiers. They were captured after kidnappers bribed a government official to secure a military truck and impersonated security officers.
The captors “knocked on the door and said they were the police,” he said. “They had Kalashnikovs, so that was that.”
Aubriere said he was treated well by the kidnappers and did not harm any of them during his escape.
Aubriere said he spent his days in captivity exercising and rereading the only book he had: “Deception Point” by Dan Brown. “I hate that book now,” he said.
He began plotting his escape a few weeks ago after noticing his captors had failed to lock both sides of the double doors to his room. “The other side was only locked from the inside,” he said.
He said he crept over seven sleeping guards around midnight, wandered onto the vacant streets and used stars to navigate toward government offices. He walked, rather than ran, to avoid arousing suspicion. Occasionally the quiet was pierced by gunshots, but he said he never stopped to find out whether they were directed at him.
“You just never stop walking,” he said.
Aubriere said he knew he remained at risk, even after escaping. “Mogadishu is a kind of jail,” he said. “Even the youngest people will try to sell you.”
Shortly before dawn, he turned himself over, hands raised, to the government soldiers.
Islamist insurgent groups Shabab and Hizbul Islam are believed to be behind the kidnappings. According to government officials, the rival insurgent groups at one point fought each other over which one would hold the hostages. They eventually split custody, each taking one man, officials said.
