Washington D.C. – ABC News, January 31, 2025
Olivier Dubois, a French journalist, was kidnapped by JNIM, a branch of al-Qaida in Africa’s Sahel region, while on his way to interview one of the group’s leaders in northern Mali
For a foreign correspondent in Mali, the assignment seemed like a dream: as Islamic extremists upended the region, Olivier Dubois, a French journalist, secured a rare interview with a leader of JNIM, an al-Qaida’s affiliate in the Sahel.
Or so he thought. En route to the interview in Gao, northern Mali, in April 2021, Dubois, a correspondent for Libération and Jeune Afrique publications, was kidnapped.
He spent 711 days in desert captivity, sleeping chained to a tree, eating dried goat meat and plotting his escape. Nearly two years after his release, he recounts his ordeal in a book released Thursday in France that draws heavily on notes Dubois secretly kept during his captivity, written on any scrap of paper he could find.
“One of the main factors that helped me resist and survive was telling myself that I am a journalist,” Dubois told The Associated Press in the first interview for English-language media since his release. “Let’s continue to gather information, let’s continue to ask questions and pretend I’m working.”
The Sahel countries of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in recent years have been upended by military coups and are now led by military juntas, which struggle against rising extremist violence and have made kidnappings a cornerstone of their strategy in the region.
