'Al Qaeda captors tried to convert me to Islam'

A French man held hostage for three months by Al-Qaeda militants in Mali said yesterday he was beaten and his captors tried to convert him to Islam, in his first comments back on French soil.

"They tried time and time again to convert me, because they want to Islamise the whole world in their own way," said Pierre Camatte, looking weary after landing at a military airport southwest of Paris.

Kidnappers came for the aid worker during the night of November 26 at his hotel in northeastern Mali, and sold him on to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African franchise of Osama Bin Laden's militant movement.

"I never acted carelessly. I have been operating in that region of Mali for 15 years," Mr Camatte told reporters. "I didn't think I was a target. They came looking for me, perhaps with the collusion of the locals."

When the kidnappers swooped, the 61-year-old fought with them and "they beat me up," he added. He described those who held him as "fanatics."

Mr Camatte was released by Al-Qaeda on Tuesday in exchange for four Islamist prisoners who had been held in Mali but were freed a day earlier.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy met Mr Camatte on Wednesday in Mali shortly after his release. He thanked Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure for helping to free him and promised support for Mali's fight against terrorism.

France has denied that it had paid a ransom for Mr Camatte.

The same militant group killed a British tourist, Edwin Dyer, in June last year after London refused to agree to their demands, and is still holding three Spaniards and two Italians kidnapped in November last year.