Fears grew on Wednesday that another Westerner had been taken hostage in Mali after a French journalist said in a video that he had been seized by a jihadist group linked to Al-Qaeda.
The video circulating on social media showing Olivier Dubois, who worked with several French media, could not be immediately verified independently, although Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and an official at the French foreign ministry confirmed he was missing.
In the undated video, which lasts about 20 seconds, Dubois, 46, said he was abducted on April 8 in Gao, central Mali, by the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the biggest jihadist alliance in the Sahel.
He is seen seated on the ground on a green sheet, in what could be a tent, dressed in a light pink traditional gown, with his beard trimmed.
Speaking in a firm voice, he asks his family, friends and the French government “to do everything in their power to get me released”.
“Olivier Dubois was on a reporting assignment in Gao in Mali. On April 8, he failed to return to his hotel after breakfast,” Christophe Deloire, the general secretary of media watchdog RSF tweeted.
“This experienced journalist, who usually works for Le Point Afrique and Liberation, knows this highly dangerous region well.”
Deloire added: “We were informed two days after his disappearance. In consultation with the editors he usually worked for, we took the decision to not to make this abduction public, in order not to hamper any swift positive outcome.”
He urged the Malian and French authorities “to do everything to secure his freedom”.
A foreign ministry official said, “We are in contact with his family and the Malian authorities. We are carrying out the usual technical verifications” of the video.
Dubois had been writing regularly for Liberation, a left-of-centre daily, since April last year. Liberation declined to make any immediate comment.
– Troubled Sahel –
Mali has been struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency which first broke out in the north of the country in 2012 before spreading to the centre and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.
Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, while the economic impact on one of the world’s poorest countries has been devastating.
Abductions have been frequent, both of Malians and foreigners.
The last French hostage was Sophie Petronin, an aid worker in her 70s, who was freed in October last year along with Malian politician Soumaila Cisse, who has since died, and Italians Nicola Chiacchio and Pier Luigi Maccalli.
There has been consistent speculation that a ransom was paid for the four hostages, which has never been confirmed by the Malian government, along with the release of 200 prisoners, some of whom were jihadists.
In October, Switzerland was informed that the GSIM had killed an evangelical missionary who had been kidnapped in Timbuktu in January 2016.
In March, the Swiss foreign ministry said the woman’s body had been recovered and formally identified.
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