Malian Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maïga claimed Thursday for his country a share of the credit in the release of French journalist Olivier Dubois, held hostage for nearly two years by jihadists and released ten days ago in Niger.
Mr. Maïga seemed to mean that the Malian army had contributed by its action to weakening the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM, or JNIM according to the Arabic acronym), affiliated with Al-Qaeda, and thus pushed this one to release Olivier Dubois.
President Macron gives a hug to the newly released journalist Olivier Dubois.
In a speech delivered at the opening of an economic forum in Ségou (center), he also mentioned the role played according to him by a Malian in the negotiations, without further details. This is the first time that a Malian official has reacted publicly to this release, while the role of Niger has been highlighted by its French allies. The head of the Malian government never mentioned the name of Olivier Dubois, referring to a hostage “taken here in Mali” and released “in a neighboring country”.
“What many do not know (is that) he was kidnapped in Mali, his adversaries were weakened in Mali and it was a Malian who worked for his release,” said Maïga in this speech whose images were viewed by AFP.
“I saw a propaganda video where it is said that it was the army of the other country that freed the hostages (and that) the Malians could do nothing… The opposite happened ”, he added, insisting on the military losses of the JNIM caused by the offensives of the Malian army, which experts dispute.
Multiple gray areas remain on the circumstances of the release of the French journalist, kidnapped on April 8, 2021 in Gao, in northern Mali, by the GSIM, the main jihadist alliance in the Sahel.
Bamako has repeatedly accused France of collusion with the jihadists, accusations categorically denied by Paris. The colonels who took power by force in 2020 pushed the military alliance with France and its partners to the end in 2022, and turned to Russia.
AFP
