From Newsday, Jan. 9:

[A] French engineer abducted Dec. 5 apparently was dumped on a Baghdad street by his fleeing captors and recovered by U.S. troops, who turned him turned over to the French Embassy on Sunday, according to Iraqi police and the French Foreign Ministry in Paris. Bernard Planche, 52, was kidnapped on his way to work at a water plant. Planche worked for a non-governmental organization called AACCESS and was found Saturday night near a checkpoint in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood. His captors had demanded the withdrawal from Iraq of French troops—even though the country has none in Iraq.

See our last post on Iraq.