Finally free. Hostage for seven hundred and eleven days in the Sahel, journalist Olivier Dubois was released on Monday March 20. Freelancing – article – daily Release and for weeklies Point et Young Africathe freelance journalist was kidnapped in Gao, in northern Mali, on April 8, 2021, where he had gone to interview a jihadist executive.
In a video posted on social networks on May 5, 2021, the Frenchman, father of two, who has lived and worked in Mali since 2015, said he was in the hands of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), a jihadist alliance in the Sahel, linked to Al-Qaida. Olivier Dubois was the only listed French hostage not held by a state in the world since the release, in October 2020, of Sophie Pétronin, also kidnapped in Mali.
The news of his release is a “huge relief” after this captivity of almost two years, “the longest for a French journalist held hostage since the war in Lebanon”welcomed Reporters Without Borders.
“We had had reassuring news on several occasions in recent months, and again very recently: he seemed in good shape, but the length of his captivity worried us”, commented the secretary general of RSF, Christophe Deloire. The French journalist reappeared free and smiling at Niamey airport where he landed, thanking Niger and France for his release, as well as the RFI media for allowing him to maintain a link with his family.
Olivier Dubois thanks Niger, thanks France. “I’ve only thought of my family for two years,” he said, before… https://t.co/s4OoGRJqam
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