During his greetings to the press, Emmanuel Macron had a special thought on Tuesday for Olivier Dubois, a journalist held hostage in Mali since April 2021 by a jihadist group. “We do not forget” Olivier Dubois, testified the Head of State, who assured that France “is fully mobilized” to obtain his release. “Tireless work is carried out by our diplomatic teams, our soldiers and the competent services”, affirmed the President of the Republic at the Elysée Palace.
“You know my very great reserve” to “give more details”, “but I want you to be sure that we are fully mobilized to work for his release”, he added, specifying that the State was “Alongside his family”. A few minutes earlier, Olivier Bost, president of the Presidential Press Association (APP) and journalist at RTL, had mentioned the fate of Olivier Dubois, “the only French hostage in the world” since the release in October 2020 of Sophie Pétronin, also kidnapped in Mali.
His family recently denounced an “unbearable silence”
The 47-year-old freelance journalist, who has lived and worked in Mali since 2015, announced his kidnapping in a video released on May 5, 2021, explaining that he was kidnapped on April 8 in Gao, in the north of the country, by the Support Group. to Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel, linked to Al-Qaeda. At the end of May, France had confirmed that he was hostage to a jihadist group and the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) had opened a preliminary investigation for “organized kidnapping” and “in connection with a terrorist enterprise”.
The family of Olivier Dubois denounced, in early January, the silence of the authorities on his fate by launching a petition for his release. “We don’t know anything. This lack of information and this silence are unbearable, while Olivier is in an emergency situation, ”his family wrote at the time.