2023-05-17 20:00:05
► Did the French army use Olivier Dubois?
According to the survey conducted by The world, Release, RFI and TV5 Monde, the soldiers of Operation Barkhane would have tried to use the French journalist Olivier Dubois without his knowledge, to reach the jihadist leader Ag Albakaye, with whom he had an appointment in northern Mali on April 8 2021. In this clandestine operation, the French army would have relied on the fixer of the journalist, a young 25-year-old Tuareg who served as their informant. The latter would have disclosed to his officer dealing with the details related to the organization and performance of the interview.
Olivier Dubois delivered to himself
This information would have been used by Barkhane to mount a military operation against Ag Albakaye. But which ? To arrest or even kill him (“neutralize”, according to the elements of language adopted by the military) during his meeting with Olivier Dubois? “The goal of our mission was to locate Ag Albakaye and to be able to follow him to his refuge area,” assured the colonel in charge of intelligence in Gao in a document consulted by the four media.
Informed that Olivier Dubois was most likely going to fall into a trap, the French soldiers did not inform him directly, any more than his fixer with whom they were in direct contact. This investigation reveals, finally, that the soldiers who were watching Olivier Dubois lost his contact when he took the road to find Ag Albakaye, on April 8, 2021. After 48 hours, they will understand that the French journalist was kidnapped.
► Were there any shortcomings on the part of the French army?
This is what Arnaud Froger, head of the Investigation office at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), thinks. “Having undertaken to use Olivier Dubois, a journalist, French national, as a Trojan horse to carry out an intelligence operation poses a serious ethical problem.he believes. Because all this is done without his knowledge, Olivier Dubois is unaware of the configuration in which he is evolving, which contributes to putting him in additional danger on an interview project which is already risky. »
A failing consideration of the army
“We are going to endanger the life of a journalist and French national to achieve an objective of intelligence of a medium target, without planning a device in case things go wrong, and in addition by not sending him the information about the risk he takes.he laments.
Responsible for investigating this affair internally, the Army Inspectorate concluded at the end of 2021 that there was no “no personal fault within the Barkhane force” more than “the sensitivity of the subject was not taken into account at a sufficient level to conduct (…) a dissuasive action against the journalist”.
► What was the main mission of Barkhane’s intelligence services?
One of its priority missions, from the launch of Operation Serval (first name of Operation Barkhane), was to collect the computerization necessary to eliminate the priority targets of the French army (“high level target”) at the within the Sahelian jihadist movement: about fifteen names, at most. This resulted in a « long and difficult tracking down of chiefs, experienced in clandestine life and inserted into the Malian social fabric since the beginning of the 2000s”underlines expert Jonathan Guiffard in a note from theMontaigne Institute. A counter-terrorist war in which intelligence therefore played a key role and which achieved results. Thanks to the information collected by this service, many jihadist leaders have been killed by France, including Yahia Abou el-Hammam, Abdelmalek Droukdal and Abou Ammar Al Jazairi.
A Tuareg prism
To achieve this objective, the French soldiers relied on agents, informants within Malian society, whom they remunerated as, it seems, Olivier Dubois’ fixer. They recruited many from among the Tuaregs with whom the French army has had privileged ties since colonization. But also because this community is very present in the north of Mali where the jihadists pursued by the French army are rampant.
Paris has always relied on Tuareg intermediaries to negotiate the release of French hostages in the Sahel, such as Mohamed Akotey, maneuvering for the return to freedom of Olivier Dubois.
#murky #game #military #intelligence