Forty editors of French-speaking media call on the French authorities to “intensify their efforts to obtain as soon as possible” the release of the journalist Olivier Dubois, hostage in Mali for a year and a half, in a column to be published on Saturday in Release. “This Saturday, October 8, 2022, it has been exactly eighteen months since Olivier Dubois was taken hostage in northern Mali. Eighteen months, 78 weeks, 547 days”, recalls the text, initiated by the daily Liberation and the NGO Reporters Without Borders.
“Only two videos of Olivier have reached us. The last one aired in March. Since then, nothing. We renew today our appeal to the French authorities to intensify their efforts to obtain his release as soon as possible,” urge the signatories of the appeal. Among these are the editors of the different families of information: national and regional daily press, magazines, television, radio stations, online information sites, press agencies.
“Since the hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s, more than thirty years ago, no journalist has been held captive for so long “, they point out. “We don’t know much. We know that he had gone to interview a jihadist leader in Gao, in the north of the country. That he has since been held hostage by the Jnim (according to the Arabic acronym) the Support Group for Islam and Muslims, affiliated with Al-Qaeda. »
“All efforts are being made,” promised the government
Last August, following the withdrawal of French military forces from Mali plagued by the spread of jihadism, the Deputy Foreign Affairs Spokesman François Delmas had ensured that “the withdrawal of Operation Barkhane from Mali does not diminish [ait] in no way the mobilization of France to free Mr. Olivier Dubois”. “Every effort is being made to obtain the release of our compatriot,” he said.
The independent journalist, who has lived and worked in Mali since 2015, had himself announced his abduction in a video broadcast on social networks on May 5, 2021. He notably collaborates with Liberation, Le Point and Jeune Afrique.
