Forty editors-in-chief of Francophone media ask the French authorities to “increase their efforts to obtain as soon as possible” the release of journalist Olivier Dubois, held hostage in Mali for a year and a half, at a forum this Saturday in Release.
“This Saturday, October 8, 2022, it has been exactly eighteen months since Olivier Dubois was taken hostage in northern Mali. Eighteen months, 78 weeks, 547 days”, recalls the text, initiated by the Liberation newspaper and the NGO Reporters without Borders. .
“Only two videos of Olivier have reached us. The last one was published in March. Since then, nothing. Today we renew our call on the French authorities to intensify their efforts to obtain his release as soon as possible,” the signatories of the Agreement urge. appeal.
“No journalist has been held captive for so long”
Among them are the editors of the different families of information: national and regional daily press, magazines, televisions, radio stations, online information sites, press agencies.
Since the hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s, more than thirty years ago, no journalist has been held captive for so long.
“We don’t know much. We know that she had gone to meet a jihadist leader in Gao, in the north of the country. That since then he has been held hostage by the Jnim (according to the Arabic acronym) the Support Group for Islam and Muslims, affiliated with Al-Qaeda.”
The Government promises that “everything possible is being done”
Last August, after the withdrawal of the French military forces from Mali in the face of the jihadist spread, the deputy spokesman for Foreign Affairs, François Delmas, assured that “the withdrawal of Operation Barkhane from Mali will not diminish[ait] in no way the mobilization of France to free Olivier Dubois”.
“Everything possible is being done to secure the release of our compatriot,” he said.
The independent journalist, who has lived and worked in Mali since 2015, had himself announced his kidnapping in a video broadcast on social networks on May 5, 2021. He collaborates in particular with Releasethe Spot Y young africa.
Source: BFM TV
