A French journalist recounts 711 days of captivity as a hostage of Islamic extremists in Mali

DAKAR – For a overseas correspondent in Mali, the project appeared like a dream: as Islamic extremists upended the region, Olivier Dubois, a French journalist, secured a uncommon interview with a pacesetter of JNIM, an al-Qaida’s affiliate within the Sahel.

Or so he thought. En path 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, consuming dried goat meat and plotting his escape. Almost two years after his launch, he recounts his ordeal in a e book launched Thursday in France that attracts closely on notes Dubois secretly stored throughout his captivity, written on any scrap of paper he might discover.

“One of many important components that helped me resist and survive was telling myself that I’m a journalist,” Dubois advised The Related Press within the first interview for English-language media since his launch. “Let’s proceed to collect info, let’s proceed to ask questions and faux I’m working.”

The Sahel nations of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in recent times have been upended by navy coups and are actually led by navy juntas, which battle against rising extremist violence and have made kidnappings a cornerstone of their technique within the area.

Upon his launch, French media published an investigation revealing that Dubois’s fixer had labored with French intelligence, who used him to find the extremist chief he was attempting to interview.

Dubois advised the AP he knew his venture was dangerous, however that he trusted his fixer an excessive amount of and ignored the warning indicators.

“I’m undecided,” he mentioned of the circumstances surrounding his kidnapping. “I feel it was a betrayal. However the motive for the betrayal is just not but clear. I’ve not spoken to my fixer since I’ve been launched.”

Kidnappings have skyrocketed within the Sahel in recent times, in accordance with information from the U.S.-based Armed Battle Location & Occasion Knowledge Mission, or ACLED.

JNIM, the Sahelian branch of al-Qaida, has been accountable for many of the 1,468 kidnappings in Sahel and Benin between 2017 and 2025, in accordance with the ACLED. The group depends on ransom cash to fund their operations and on the concern they instill on native populations to maintain them in examine.

Dubois recalled being advised he could be “launched shortly” if his household and authorities did as instructed.

Dubois was launched on March 20, 2023, in Agadez, Niger, however particulars of his launch, together with whether or not a ransom was paid, stay undisclosed.

French President Emmanuel Macron took to the social platform X to jot down “Olivier Dubois is free,” however he didn’t elaborate on the circumstances of the discharge.

Chatting with the AP, Dubois mentioned that he didn’t know the main points both, however he recalled being advised by the rebels that ransoms different by nationality. As a French citizen, he was value 10 million euros, he was advised. A South African was value 50 million.

Having lined quite a few hostage tales within the area, Dubois knew that even when freed, his ordeal may very well be prolonged.

With the intention to keep sane, he turned obsessive about plotting an escape. However after the fourth unsuccessful try, his captors staged a mock execution and threatened to kill him if he tried once more. So as a substitute, Dubois began studying the Quran.

Studying the holy e book of Islam served a twin objective: it occupied his thoughts, and helped him perceive his captors higher, be capable to talk about with them and construct a relationship, so they might deal with him extra as a human being and fewer as an nameless hostage.

Unexpectedly, it additionally put him on a extra non secular path.

“I’m a former atheist, then an agnostic who thought I’d cease there,” he mentioned. “Studying the Quran made me need to learn different non secular texts. This captivity has been the start of a journey that can maybe lead me to God — or not.”

Now that his e book — “Prisonnier du désert, 711 jours aux mains d’Al-Qaïda,” which interprets in English into “Prisoner of the desert, 711 days within the palms of Al-Qaida” — is out, Dubois mentioned he hoped he was prepared to return to journalism and transfer on.

However the expertise nonetheless haunts him.

“It was painful labour,” he mentioned of the writing course of. “The primary reflex after ending it was to distance myself from the story, hoping time will go and, perhaps, all of that can be behind me. However I do not actually know if that is potential.”