In Mali, Hamadoun Nialibouly has not been heard from for a year and eight months. This Malian journalist was kidnapped on September 27, 2020 in central Mali by armed men while riding a bus. Abused, tied up, the radio journalist Dandé Douentza – the Voice of Douentza – never gave a sign of life again. On the occasion of the fourteen months of detention of Olivier Dubois on Wednesday, RFI cited his name among those of the hostages still held in Mali. His family wanted to provide some clarification.
Hamadoun Nialibouly was not kidnapped by a jihadist group. It is a known fact, since the day of his abduction: it was traditional dozo hunters, recognizable by their clothes and their charms, who made him get off his bus.
According to testimonies from passengers, reported by his family, they accused the journalist, who had just returned from several days of training in Bamako, of being involved in a jihadist attack.
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“Hunters don’t keep their hostages for long,” a family member of Hamadoun Nialibouly worries today, “they quickly demand a ransom or they kill. We have never received any claim, any request. »
A year and eight months after his abduction, several members of the journalist’s family now share the same feeling: the chances that Hamadoun Nialibouly is still alive today are very slim. “But as long as his death is not confirmed, everything is possible”, hopes one of them, who regrets that the police investigations have not made it possible to find the kidnappers. “We have no news, neither from our relative, nor from the investigations, nor from the authorities. »
Hamadoun Nialibouly had been abducted near the village of Mandio, between Sofara and Sévaré, Mopti region. The hunters’ area Dan Na Ambassagou, precisely from the so-called “Fato Camp” or “Fatobougou. »
Joined by RFI, Mamoudou Goudienkilé, president of this self-defense group, on the front line against the jihadists but regularly accused of abuses, denies any involvement.
“Hamadoun has two wives and ten children,” sighs a relative. The youngest was barely two months old when his father was kidnapped. Now he begins to speak. »
► Read also : fourteen months of captivity in Mali for the French journalist Olivier Dubois