Nicolas Hénin (born 7 November 1975 at Le Mans) is a French journalist who publishes in written media, radio and television. As a specialist of the Middle East, he has covered the Iraq War and the Syrian Civil War. He was captured by ISIS in Syria on 22 June 2013, along with three other Frenchmen, and held hostage until 18 April 2014. After his liberation, Hénin co-founded Action Résilience, a network promoting level-headedness in anti-terrorism, and had become a notable voice in the fight against hate speech.
He attended the 69th national session of the Institute of Advanced Studies in National Defence (IHEDN). He's a member of the European Commission’s RAN (Radicalisation Awareness Network) Experts Pool, of the FrancoPrev network of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie and a member of the Unesco-Prev Chair in Prevention of Radicalisation and Violent Extremism hosted by the Université de Sherbrooke, Concordia University and Université du Québec à Montréal.
Biography
Early life
Nicolas Hénin was born to the family of a professor of Lycée Henri-IV and of academic Pierre-Yves Hénin; his grandfather was agronomist Stéphane Hénin. After graduating from lycée Henri-IV, he went on to study in a classe préparatoire at lycée Fénelon and graduated with a Licence in Geography and a Master in History from Panthéon-Sorbonne University. After studying Arabic, he specialised on the Middle East, and obtained a Master in International Relations with a thesis titled Egyptian interarabic relations and the separate peace with Israel: November 1977 (), written during a research semester at Cairo at CEDEJ (). He then published articles in Jeune Afrique on the Sudan Civil War in 1997, and a photographic reportage on Yemen, , published in the monthly in November 1999.
After returning to France, he studied at (IPJ), graduating in 1999.
Early career
Nicolas Hénin started working at Infomedia, only to resign in November 2002 to work as an independent in Iraq. He reported for several months on the runup to the Iraq War and later for the whole of the conflict, notably for Radio France. He then reported on the aftermath of the Invasion, first in Baghdad until September 2004, and then from Amman, where he sought a safe location upon request from the management of Radio France, following the abduction of Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. He then went on to reporting about Africa and the Middle East for several French-language media, such as Le Point, Arte, Radio France, RTBF, Radio Télévision Suisse, Radio Canada, Marianne and L'Hebdo.
He worked as a chief operator for images and as researcher for the documentary film , by Jean-Pierre Krief, broadcast on Arte for the tenth anniversary of the invasion.
He performed several assignments on crisis in Sudan, Somalia and Yemen as correspondent for Le Point as well as for TV reportage, most of them by the Solas Films agency, broadcast notably on Arte. Since the events of the Arab Spring, Nicolas Hénin has covered events in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, where he made five trips from 2011 to June 2013.
Nicolas Hénin has been nominated several times for the Bayeux-Calvados Awards for war correspondents in radio (2004 and 2011), TV reporting (2008) and printed press (2013).
Abduction by ISIS and captivity in Syria
On 22 June 2013, agents of ISIS abducted Hénin as he was on assignment at Raqqa, along with photographer Pierre Torrès. The abduction was initially kept a secret upon request of Hénin's and Torrès' families, before being publicised by French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on 9 October 2013. French authorities reported that signs of life had been recorded in August and October 2013.
In captivity, Hénin met with other hostages, notably US journalist James Foley.
A number of support actions and demonstrations organised notably by the "Hostages in Syria" committee were held to push for Hénin's and Torrès' liberation, as well as that of Didier François and Edouard Elias, who had been captured on 6 June. Hénin's Alma mater IPJ () named its 34th class after him. The four hostages were eventually freed on 18 April 2014. Although little information was released on Hénin's conditions in captivity, he stated that he had escaped after three days, on 22 June 2013, but had been recaptured after a night trying to flee.
On 26 April 2014, the German weekly Focus stated that France had paid 18 million dollars to secure the hostages' freedom.
In September 2014, after the allegations were made in Le Monde, Hénin confirmed that Mehdi Nemmouche, suspected in the Jewish Museum of Belgium Shooting, had been one of his guards in Syria and had treated him with brutality.