The head of Paris-based NGO Reporters Without Borders confirmed on Wednesday that French journalist Olivier Dubois was kidnapped on April 8th while working in Mali’s northern city of Gao, reports FRANCE 24.
A video was released Wednesday showing Dubois saying he was kidnapped on April 8th by the al-Qaida-linked group JNIM. In the video he calls on his family, friends and authorities to work for his release. The video could not be independently verified.
Reporters Without Borders Secretary General and Executive Director Christophe Deloire confirmed the kidnapping to The Associated Press, and called for the reporter's release.
“We ask the Malian and French authorities to do everything possible to obtain his release and send all our support to his family and loved ones,” he posted on Twitter.
Dubois works for various French news outlets including Le Point Afrique and left-leaning weekly Libération. According to the latter, he has been based in the country for six years.
Dubois was reporting in Gao in northern Mali and did not return to his hotel after lunch on April 8, Deloire said. But he added on Twitter that his media freedom organisation first became aware of Dubois's disappearance two days later, when Dubois failed to show up for his flight back to the Malian capital of Bamako.
The French Foreign Ministry confirmed his disappearance in a statement, stopping short of describing it as a kidnapping, but saying they are in touch with his family and Malian authorities.
French civilians have long been favoured targets for kidnapping by criminal and Islamist groups in West Africa's arid Sahel region, partly because of perceptions that the French government is prepared to pay ransoms to secure their release.
France has repeatedly denied paying ransoms for hostages. Malian authorities were not immediately available for comment.
FRANCE 24's specialist in jihadi movements, Wassim Nasr, shed more light on the situation. Although it was known that Dubois was missing since April 8th, "We didn't know whether he was a hostage or had been invited by a jihadii group," he said. "But the fact is today, in this video, he says himself that he's been taken hostage by JNIM, making him the latest French hostage in the region since the liberation of Sophie Pétronin a few months ago," added Nasr.
French aid worker Pétronin was freed in October last year alongside a senior Malian politician and two Italians in a prisoner swap deal that saw scores of Islamist militants released. Pétronin had been abducted near Gao in late 2016.