French journalist Olivier Dubois, 48, who was kidnapped in northern Mali by jihadists in April 2021, and American aid worker Jeffery Woodke, 62, who was abducted in Niger in October 2016, were both released on Monday, when they appeared at a press conference in Niger's capital, Niamey.
Two French tourists kidnapped while on a safari trip in Benin and who were rescued last week along with two other hostages after their captors transferred them to the Sahel region of Burkina Faso, arrived at a military airfield close to Paris on Saturday where they and a South Korean woman freed with them were greeted by President Emmanuel Macron.
Two French tourists who were taken hostage earlier this month while exploring the Pendjari national park in Benin, when their guide was murdered, arrived back in France on Saturday. They were freed from a location in nearby Burkina Faso by a special forces operation on Friday, during which two French marines lost their lives. The dramatic events have highlighted how jihadist groups have recently begun seizing control of swathes of this region of West Africa, taking advantage of a growing resentment among sections of the population against state authorities. Rémi Carayol reports.
Two marines and four suspected kidnappers died in an exchange of fire when a French special forces unit overnight rescued two French nationals, an American and a South Korean being held hostage in northern Burkina Faso.
Mehdi Nemmouche, 32, detained in Belgium on suspicion of carrying out the May 2014 shooting attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, which left four people dead, was transported to Paris on Wednesday to appear before an examining magistrate investigating his suspected role as jailkeeper in Syria between 2013 and 2014 of four French journalists taken hostage there.
