French army in spotlight over journalist’s kidnapping in Mali

A screengrab taken on May 5, 2021 from an undated propaganda video circulating on social media shows French journalist Olivier Dubois. (AFP/File)

• The report comes amid an investigation into what happened to journalist Olivier Dubois, 48, who was abducted in the northern Malian town of Gao in April 2021
• The report was published by newspapers Le Monde and Liberation as well as broadcasters RFI and TV5Monde

PARIS: French forces tried to use a journalist’s visit to northern Mali to track a militant leader but failed to prevent the reporter from being kidnapped by the militants, French media reported Wednesday.
The report comes amid an investigation into what happened to journalist Olivier Dubois, 48, who was abducted in the northern Malian town of Gao in April 2021.
He flew home to France in March, nearly two years after he was kidnapped by the Al-Qaeda-linked Group to Support Islam and Muslims (JNIM).
Based on French and Malian judicial documents from the probe, the report said a fixer working with Dubois had informed France’s anti-militant Barkhane force of his plans to interview a militant leader.
Barkhane planned to track the leader back to his base but then abandoned the operation because it was deemed “too dangerous for the journalist,” it said.
But they did not deploy the necessary means to prevent the journalist from being kidnapped, it added.
The report was published by newspapers Le Monde and Liberation as well as broadcasters RFI and TV5Monde.
A diplomatic source told AFP a letter was sent to Dubois the day he was kidnapped, formally urging him not to make the trip, after “a meeting the previous day with the embassy during which he had already been given the same advice.”
In addition, Liberation — for whom Dubois was writing at the time — had refused to back his plan to interview the militant in view of the risks.
Contacted by AFP, the French foreign ministry declined to comment due to the ongoing investigation.
The military general staff also declined to comment.
An internal army probe found in late 2021 that there had been “no personal fault within the Barkhane force” over the kidnapping.
But “the sensitivity of the topic was not sufficiently taken into account so as to allow... a dissuasive action with regards to the journalist,” it said.
Arnaud Froger, in charges of investigations at Reporters Without Borders, told AFP the French army’s plan had posed “a grave ethical problem.”
“They were going to endanger the life of a French journalist and citizen to reach a medium-level intelligence target, without planning any measures in case things took a bad turn, and also without passing on the information about the risk he was taking,” he said.
French forces withdrew from Mali last year following a fallout with the ruling junta.