He had been hostage to a jihadist group in Mali since April 2021. French journalist Olivier Dubois was released on Monday March 20. He arrived free at Niamey airport in Niger, noted an AFP journalist. When he got off the plane, Olivier Dubois appeared smiling and visibly moved, dressed in an open white shirt and beige pants.
The 48-year-old freelance journalist, who has lived and worked in Mali since 2015, had himself announced his kidnapping in a video posted on social networks on May 5, 2021. He explained there that he had been kidnapped on April 8 in Gao, in the northern Mali, by the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel, linked to Al-Qaeda.
The release of Olivier Dubois is a “huge relief” after 711 days spent in Mali in captivity, “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, questioned by the AFP.
