Kaduna - Nigerian Islamist group Ansaru said on Sunday it was behind the kidnap of a French national last week, citing France's ban on full-face veils and its support for military action in Mali.
Ansaru sent a message to Nigerian reporters saying it was holding 63-year-old Francis Colump, who was taken on December 19 when around 30 gunmen attacked his residence in the remote northern town of Rimi, close to the Niger border.
The Nigerian police declined to comment on the claim but had already named Colump as the man abducted. He was working for French renewable energy firm Vergnet, which had been building Nigeria's first wind farm.
"The reason we kidnapped him is ... the law the government created which prohibits the wearing of niqab by French Muslim women. This is a denial of their religious rights," said the statement by the group, written in the local Hausa language.
"And again the participation of France in supporting the military attack on Muslims in northern Mali," the message signed by the group's purported leader Abu Usamata Ansari said.
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