FRENCH POLICE freed five children and their teacher after they were taken hostage for four hours yesterday by a teenager armed with two swords in the eastern French city of Besançon.
The 17-year-old was detained just before 1pm after an elite police unit entered the Charles Fourier pre-school and accompanied the children and their teacher to safety. The teenager had entered the building before 9am and took 20 people hostage, but released most of them within an hour after discussions with police negotiators.
Education minister Luc Chatel, who travelled to the scene yesterday morning, said the rescue took place when the children were being fed, which allowed the police to separate them from the hostage-taker. The young man was overpowered with a Taser electro-shock weapon, said Laurent Gresset, secretary general of the police union Alliance.
The hostage-taker’s motives were not known, although Jean-Marc Magda, administrative head of the mayor’s office, said he was known to suffer from depression and psychological problems.
Mr Gresset said he was “more depressive, even suicidal, than dangerous” and at one point during the stand-off requested a gun in order to take his own life. “He used no violence and never threatened the children,” Mr Gresset added.
“He is a clearly depressive individual who never had any other demand but to put an end to his own life,” Mr Chatel said.
Nathalie Roffet, the 37-year-old teacher who was with the children when they were released, said the atmosphere was calm and they never felt in danger.
“He came in and said, ‘this is a hostage-taking. I want the windows closed and the curtains drawn’,” Ms Roffet told iTélé. “He stayed in a corner, telephone in hand, and I think he called the police. He was talking to them all morning.
“He never spoke to the children. He simply replied to my questions. When I asked him could some of the children go and get a drink, he said, ‘yes, no problem’.” Shortly after the teenager entered the school, police surrounded the building and a unit of the commando-style GIPN division, which specialises in hostage-takings, arrived from Strasbourg. Police said telephone contact was quickly established with the teenager, resulting in the release of 14 people in three stages over the morning.
The children, aged between four and six, were wrapped in blankets and carried away by relatives. Affected families were being given psychological counselling to ensure that “this incident is no more than a bad memory”, said Mr Chatel.
President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was delighted by the outcome, praised the police and extended his “solidarity” to the teachers.
Mr Sarkozy was mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly in 1993, when it was the scene of the last major hostage-taking at a French school.
An armed man calling himself “Human Bomb” took a class of 21 children hostage and demanded a ransom of the equivalent of €15 million. Police shot him dead and the children were freed unharmed.