The soldiers of the anti-jihadist operation in the Sahel Barkhane would have tried to use the French journalist Olivier Dubois without his knowledge to locate a jihadist leader, without preventing his kidnapping in Mali in 2021, says an investigation carried out by several French media.
The French force Barkhane was informed of the French journalist’s plan to meet a jihadist leader affiliated with Al-Qaeda in northern Mali, via a fixer serving as an indicator for the armies. The military considered using this appointment to locate this emir before giving up because of the risks involved, according to Le Monde, which conducted the investigation with Liberation, RFI and TV5Monde.
Released last March, Olivier Dubois was kidnapped on April 8, 2021 in Gao, northern Mali, by GSIM, the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel linked to Al-Qaeda. He collaborated in particular with the daily Liberation and the magazine Le Point and lived in Mali since 2015. According to the French media having had access to French and Malian legal documents relating to the case, the soldiers of Barkhane would have given up in extremis to the operation, but would not have deployed the appropriate means to prevent the kidnapping of Olivier Dubois in Gao, where he was to meet Abdallah Ag Albakaye.
Contacted by AFP, the French Foreign Ministry declined to comment “due to the ongoing judicial investigation”. The staff declined to comment. From diplomatic sources, we recall that a “red letter” – for strongly discouraged – had been sent to Olivier Dubois the day before his kidnapping to dissuade him from making this trip. The newspaper Liberation had for its part refused the interview project of Olivier Dubois because of the risks involved.
