The journalist was abducted on April 8 in Gao by the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel related to Al-Qaeda.
Le Monde with AFP
Nearly nine months after the removal of Journalist Olivier Dubois by a jihadist group in Mali, the family of the only French hostage in the world has put on line Thursday night 6 January a petition to ask for his release.
The text, visible on the Change.org site, aims to “alert the French citizens of the situation and to challenge the French and Malian heads of state on his case and ask for his liberation,” writes the family in a statement.
“We do not know anything. This lack of information and silence are unbearable on a daily basis, when Olivier is in an emergency situation,” deplore the mother of the journalist, his sister Canes Bernard and his spouse.
“Our multiple requests for meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, in order to obtain concrete elements on the approaches undertaken to release Olivier remain unanswered”, do they continue.
“Never news on Olivier”
“The Center for Crisis and Support [of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs] is our only relationship with the State, these are very rarely manifest, unless we contact them from ourselves, and explain to us Never again on Olivier, “says his loved ones.
“end of December 2021, for the first time, the presidency [French] finally replied, through its chief of staff, that” State services are paying the greatest attention to evolution From the situation of olive (…) “, unsatisfactory and devotional response of any empathy and elusing the possible actions undertaken,” says the family.
“In 2022, while the two presidential elections will take place in France as in Mali and that the fight of terrorism remains at the heart of these campaigns, this silence with regard to Olivier is all the more surprising” , she wrote in the online petition.
The 47-year-old independent journalist, living and working in Mali since 2015, had announced his kidnapping in a broadcast on social networks on May 5, explaining to have been kidnapped on April 8 in Gao, in the North Mali, by the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main alliance jihadist in the Sahel related to Al-Qaeda.
Since the release in October 2020 from Sophie Pétronin, a septuagenarian abducted in December 2016 in Gao also, Olivier Dubois is the only French hostage abroad.