He had been hostage to a jihadist group in Mali since April 2021. French journalist Olivier Dubois arrived free on Monday March 20 at Niamey airport in Niger, noted an AFP journalist.
“I feel tired but I’m fine,” he said as he got off the plane, smiling and visibly moved, wearing an open white shirt over a t-shirt and beige pants. “It’s huge for me to be here, to be free, I wanted to pay tribute to Niger for its know-how in this delicate mission and to pay tribute to France and to all those who allowed me to be there. today”, he added in front of several journalists.
American humanitarian Jeffery Woodke, kidnapped in October 2016 in Niger, has also been released. Leaning on a cane, white hair, he appeared alongside Olivier Dubois.
“The hostages were recovered safe and sound by the Nigerien authorities before being handed over to the French and American authorities,” Niger’s Interior Minister Hamadou Souley said Monday at the airport.
Hostage for 711 days
The 48-year-old freelance journalist, who has lived and worked in Mali since 2015, had himself announced his kidnapping in a video posted on social networks on May 5, 2021. He explained there that he had been kidnapped on April 8 in Gao, in the northern Mali, by the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel, linked to Al-Qaeda.
He collaborated with Release, Point And Young Africa.
The release of Olivier Dubois is a “huge relief” after 711 days spent in Mali in captivity, “the longest for a French journalist held hostage since the war in Lebanon”, welcomed Reporters Without Borders. “We had had reassuring news on several occasions in recent months, and again very recently: he seemed in good shape, but the length of his captivity worried us”, commented the secretary general of RSF, Christophe Deloire, questioned by the AFP.