Woman Acquitted of Blasphemy Moved from Jail; France Honors Heroism of Louise de Bettignies
VAUSE: 78 children kidnapped from a boarding school in Cameroon have been released. A military spokesman claims the hostage takers are Anglophone separatist fighters calling for independence from Cameroon's French-speaking majority government.</s>GEMON DAMIANUS, MOTHER OF KIDNAPPED CHILD: War is</s>SIMEYA PRISCALINE, AUNT OF KIDNAPPED CHILD: You can imagine the stress that we've gone through for these past two days. It has been horrible. We have spent sleepless nights. We thanks the Almighty God. That's the way -- safe and sound.</s>VAUSE: Two children are still being held hostage with their principal and a teacher. A school official says the children's parents are high-ranking members of the government. A Christian woman in Pakistan is now free from jail a week after her death sentence is overturned. But her safety is still far from certain. Intelligence sources say Asia Bibi has been moved to an undisclosed location. She spent eight years on death row after being convicted of blasphemy. She won her appeal last week but has been kept in prison because she was facing threats from hard line Islamists angered by her acquittal. CNN's Sophia Saifi joins us now, live from Islamabad. So Safire -- what exactly do we know about, you know, her future, where she is, how they intend to deal with the, you know, the issue simply of her safety?</s>SOPHIA SAIFI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John -- there is a bit of confusion here on the ground in local media concerning, you know, where Asia Bibi is. I mean we have to take into consideration that there are lots of extreme right-wing groups out for her death, you know, to kill her basically. Because of that reason late last night, we found out that the jail cell where she'd been kept for the past eight years on death row which had then become into a safe house because there had been so many protests that the country and state could not really confirm that they could keep her safe. That safe house -- she has now left that safe house. She's been moved to an undisclosed location and the confusion arises as whether she's still in the country or not. Now the question is, is that the TLP which is the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, a right-wing Islamist group which shut down the country for three long days after Asia's acquittal have said that, you know, they're going to be sending in a petition to the Supreme Court preventing Asia from leaving the country, putting her on that exit control list which is Pakistan's no-fly list. Legally Asia is not on that list. But there is a petition in the works to put her on that list. There are also the consequences of the government flying her out of the country. There have been lots of western countries who kind of clamored for, you know, wanting to help her to get out, wanting to provide her asylum. But because of the many security issues around the blasphemy laws in Pakistan, considering that, you know, if anyone talks against blasphemy laws even their liable to be killed. There is a lot of sensitivity around not just Asia Bibi. Her lawyer fled to the Netherlands last week leaving her in the lurch for his own safety. He took his family with him. And you know, there is a lot of confusion. The foreign office is claiming that she is very much in the country. You know, there's been a lot of different reports coming in. But the Pakistani government is still saying that she's still very much in Pakistan but in an undisclosed location -- John.</s>MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Louise de Bettignies was just a young French girl from an upper class family until the outbreak of World War I -- a war that would make her a hero.</s>HENRI CLAUD DE BETTIGNIES, GREAT NEPHEW OF LOUISE DE BETTIGNIES: There was a sense that -- this war was a disaster for everyone and she needed to try to contribute and to use her personality and her experience in different countries and the language and so forth and to service against the Germans.</s>BELL: At just 34, Louise posing as a peddler and using the name Alice Dubois began working for the British, spying on German positions and troop movements in northern France and passing crucial knowledge on the Allies, sometimes in the form of messages hidden inside toys and chocolate bars. Louise de Bettignies became known as the Joan of Arc of the North. And it is in the northern French city of Lille that she is best remembered with streets signs, plaques, schools and memorials like this one. It was after Lille fell that Louise began running her network of spies. (on camera): Passing the message on to the British. One of her very last communications just before her capture by Germans warned of a massive offensive that was being planned at Verdun. (voice over): The French military refused to believe it and just 16 months after taking Lille, the Germans kicked off one of the bloodiest battles of World War</s>I. DE BETTIGNIES: The kept my city to</s>BELL: But Louise was caught, according to her biographers, swallowing her final message before being locked away. Louise died in a German prison just before the end of the war although she was never forgotten.</s>DE BETTIGNIES: The family is</s>BELL: An armistice now being remembered 100 years on along with the sacrifices made by people like Louise de Bettignies for the allied cause and in the name of peace. Melissa Bell, CNN -- Paris.</s>VAUSE: And we're back right after this.