French reporters who escaped Syria return home

March 2, 2012: A Lebanese Red Cross ambulance follows Lebanese police vehicles carrying two injured French journalists who were trapped at Baba Amr neighborhood in Homs province after they were wounded by the Syrian government forces shelling, to enter the hospital of Hotel Dieu, in Beirut, Lebanon. (AP)

BEIRUT – Two French journalists who were smuggled out of Syria arrived Friday in France after being trapped for nine days in the war-torn country.

Edith Bouvier, 31, who was injured, and William Daniels were caught up in a Syrian government siege of a rebel-held neighborhood in the Syrian city of Homs.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, greeting them at the military airport of Villacoublay west of Paris, praised Bouvier's courage and the "almost chivalrous spirit of her partner in misfortune, William Daniels, who never abandoned Edith Bouvier even though he was unhurt and had other possibilities of getting out."

The pair lingered in the special French plane that brought them home, joined by Sarkozy and their family members.

"I want to say in the most solemn way that the Syrian authorities will have to answer to international legal authorities for their crimes. The crimes they committed will not go unpunished,"Sarkozy said before entering the plane.

Bouvier was injured during a rocket attack that killed two Western journalists -- American reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik -- and wounded a British photographer, Paul Conroy. Daniels was not hurt in the attack.