Journalist Olivier Dubois is hostage to a jihadist group in Mali, confirms Le Drian

Olivier Dubois himself announced his kidnapping in a video posted on social networks on May 5.

In these images, barely 30 seconds long, the French journalist explained that he was kidnapped on April 8 in Gao (north) by the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel, linked to Al -Qaïda and led by the Malian Tuareg leader Iyad Ag Ghaly.

The French government then confirmed the journalist's "disappearance".

But France now considers that Olivier Dubois, is hostage of a jihadist group, as declared this Sunday the head of French diplomacy Jean-Yves Le Drian.

"We can think that this journalist is today a new hostage (...) Everything leads us to think that he is hostage of a jihadist group", he said during the program Grand Jury of RTL / Le Figaro / LCI.

“At first we thought he was missing.

There has been a video since, "noted the Minister of Foreign Affairs, adding:" We are putting the necessary means as always.

We have succeeded in many cases ”.

Even if it was "sometimes long", underlined Jean-Yves Le Drian while refusing to give more details.

A kidnapping first kept secret

The national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office (Pnat) had for its part opened a preliminary investigation for “kidnapping in an organized group” and “in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. There were no more French hostages in the world since the release in October 2020 of Sophie Pétronin, a septuagenarian kidnapped in December 2016 in Gao as well. She was released at the same time as the Malian politician Soumaïla Cissé, who has since died, and two Italians.

Olivier Dubois, a 46-year-old freelance journalist living and working in Mali since 2015, has covered the security turmoil the Sahelian country has gone through for various media, such as the French magazine Le Point Afrique and, for a year, the French daily Liberation. He had gone on his own initiative to Gao for an interview with Abdallah Ag Albakaye, commander of a GSIM group in the Talataye area, about 150 km from Gao. The news of his disappearance was initially kept secret, with the hope of a simple change of program in this interview project.