Two journalists held hostage by the Taliban for 18 months in Afghanistan have arrived home in France to an emotional welcome.
Television reporter Hervé Ghesquierè, 47, with tears in his eyes, described being confined indoors "23 and three-quarters hours a day" and repeatedly having his hopes raised of an imminent release – and then dashed.
Cameraman Stéphane Taponier, 46, said: "We're doing really, really, really well."
Both looked quite pale but otherwise healthy, and were visibly moved by the huge crowd of journalists gathered at a military airbase outside Paris for the long-awaited homecoming.
Their plight was one of France's longest-ever hostage ordeals, and had become a national cause. President Nicolas Sarkozy, first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and France's defence and foreign ministers met the two men as they left the plane from Kabul.
The two journalists and three Afghan associates were kidnapped in December 2009 while working for France 3 television on a story about reconstruction on a road east of Kabul. They had been embedded with French troops in Afghanistan, and decided to take off to report on their own but were captured.
They were freed on Wednesday along with their Afghan translator, Reza Din. Two others were freed earlier.
French officials insist no ransom has been paid, though the circumstances of the release remained unclear.
The journalists insisted that they had not been beaten or mistreated by their Taliban captors, just suffered "very very difficult" living conditions. They said they were separated after the first three months and spent the rest of the time isolated and confined.
"We represented something important for the Taliban," Taponier said, which he said gave him hope they would eventually be freed.
In April 2010, after posting a video of the hostages on the web, the Taliban said it had submitted a list of prisoners to French authorities it wanted freed in exchange.
Last week, the French defence minister, Gérard Longuet, said the announcements of staggered French and American troop withdrawals might help the cause of freeing Ghésquierè and Taponier. US president Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of 33,000 troops by September 2012, and France followed suit, announcing it will pull out a quarter of its force of 4,000.
The Taliban gave each journalist a radio at some point, they said. Taponier was able to listen to Radio France International, which was broadcasting regular messages of support to the two men in the hope they were listening.
"That warmed our hearts," Taponier said.
But Ghesquierè was only able to get a BBC signal, and said he was largely unaware of the large support campaign in France.
He described battling boredom and discouragement by exercising in the small room where he was isolated for months, and writing.
And he exclaimed in dismay in recalling that a year-and-a-half of notes he took were taken away before his liberation, because his captors didn't want any document released.
Ghesquierè specialised in war reporting, covering the Balkans conflict and investigative reports around the globe, from Cambodia to the disputed Western Sahara territory. Taponier had filmed in Afghanistan, notably a 2000 report on the northern commander Massoud, who was later killed.
Ghesquierè said he wanted to get back to a "normal life" as soon as possible, and not "play the role of an ex-hostage".
For the past 547 days, banners bearing their photos hung in city halls around France – banners taken down in jubilation after their release.