Journalist Olivier Dubois held captive in Mali for 500 days

Olivier Dubois has been held hostage in Mali for 500 days. The journalist has just passed his 48th birthday, in captivity. He lived in Bamako and worked for several French media, including Liberation, Le Point and Jeune Afrique. On April 8, 2021, Olivier Dubois went on assignment to Gao, in northern Mali, where he was to meet the leader of a jihadist group for an interview. A long-planned trip​, from which he will not return.

Several of his colleagues have published a video of support, and his relatives have written to him in the newspaper Liberation. Among them, the journalist Marc de Boni. “Barkhane’s last soldier left Gao. But you, you’re still somewhere there, where it all began, still tossed about by the tumult of furious news. […] I would have liked so much that they could take you in our luggage, our soldiers“, he wrote to his friend.