"For them, I was just a disbeliever": the story of an ex-hostage of jihadists in the Sahel

Quebecer Edith Blais and her Italian companion Luca Tacchetto were in Burkina Faso, on the road to neighboring Benin, when they were kidnapped by a jihadist group in December 2018. The two hostages remained in the hands of the GSIM (Groupe de support for Islam and Muslims, affiliated with Al-Qaeda) until March 2020, before managing to escape.

In a testimony book,

Le Sablier

(Éditions de l'Homme), Edith Blais recounts the endless months of detention, and sends a message of hope to Olivier Dubois, kidnapped in northern Mali on April 8, 2021.

LE FIGARO.- You spent 450 days in the desert in the hands of the jihadists, under the same conditions as the journalist Olivier Dubois.

What diet were you assigned to?

Edith BLAIS.-

Our period of detention did not

unfold

in the same way over the months.

After our capture, we stayed three months together with my companion, before we were separated in different places.

I have thus changed

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