A Frenchman is at the moment being held hostage in Mali. The impartial journalist Olivier Dubois had not given any information in three weeks. He appeared on Tuesday, Could 4, on a video circulating on social networks confirming his kidnapping of JNIM, the “Islamist and Muslim group” in Arabic.
On this 21-second video, which has been circulating on social networks since yesterday, Olivier Dubois himself specifies that he was kidnapped by JNIM on April 8, virtually a month in the past. He asks his household, pals and the French authorities to do every part potential to get him launched.
Olivier Dubois, an impartial journalist working for the French newspaper Liberation and Le Level, left Gao in northern Mali in early April to interview a jihadist chief from the Islam and Muslim Help Group, reviews David Baché within the Africa service for RFI.
Olivier Dubois has lived in Mali since 2015, so it has been six years, however he labored within the nation even earlier than he lived there along with his household. He’s an skilled journalist who is aware of the fact on the bottom very nicely and who had organized his meticulous reporting, with native intermediaries.
His disappearance has been recognized since April 8, however his kinfolk had been conscious of his challenge, as nicely because the French authorities, knowledgeable in a short time. The latter puzzled if he had been kidnapped or if this lack of reports was a part of the precautionary measures taken by the jihadists that he needed to face himself.
For a number of weeks, his kinfolk, his colleagues, tried to get info in an anxiousness, apparently rising. The unfold of this video of his prisoners places an finish to their hopes. The kidnapping is now official and as alleged with this proof of life and this cry for assist.
► Additionally learn: When JNIM wished to barter with the Malian state and attacked “the French occupation”
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