French legal authorities opened Wednesday a preliminary criminal probe into lawmaker Didier Julia and his two aides, who failed a private mission to gain the two French reporters' release in Iraq.  

The probe, which would develop into a formal investigation, was opened at Didier Julia, a deputy in French President Jacques Chirac's ruling Union for a Popular Movement Party, and his two aides, Philippe Brett and Philippe Evanno, for "intelligence with a foreign power or its agents," which would "undermine the fundamental interests" of France, notably in terms of diplomacy and safety of its population.

Brett and Evanno, both 45, were freed later Wednesday under judicial control, with the interdiction to leave the country or meet with other concerned persons in the case.

French top anti-terrorist judges Jean-Louis Bruguiere and Marie-Antoinette Houyvet are entrusted with the inquiry against Julia.

One of the two French hostages freed on December 21 in Iraq, Georges Malbrunot, said on his arrival back to Paris that he was "scandalized by (Julia's) behavior -- playing with the lives of two compatriots. It is beneath contempt."

He suggested their lives were put at risk by Julia's claims that he had secured their release in September but failed at the last minute because of US interference.

A senior member of France's foreign intelligence service DGSE told French daily Le Figaro last week that Julia's intervention in September gravely compromised official efforts to contact the Islamic Army in Iraq.

Christian Chesnot of Radio France Internationale and Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro were kidnapped on August 20 south of Baghdad by a group calling itself the "Islamic Army of Iraq." They are the longest-held Western hostages in Iraq.

They were released "because they were proven not to spy for US forces, in response to appeals and demands from Islamic institutions and bodies, and in appreciation of the French government's stand on the Iraq issue and the two journalists' stand on the Palestinian cause," the Arab-language Al-Jazeera satellite TV quoted the Islamic group as saying in a statement on Tuesday.

The French government has insisted no ransom was paid for their release, but without giving details of their release.

(Xinhua News Agency December 30, 2004)