APA-Bamako (Mali) An investigation by four French media outlets, published between May 16 and 17, 2023, reveals the strategy of the French military intelligence in tracking down a jihadist leader in Mali.
it was April 8, 2021 and Olivier Dubois an investigative journalist drove into his kidnappers in Gao, northern Mali.
His kidnappers belonged to the ‘Groupe de Soutien à l’Islam et aux Musulmans’ (GSIM).
The French journalist was supposed to meet with a leading light of the Sahel branch of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an appointment that he prepared with the help of a Tuareg “friend”.
New light has been shed on the case as French media secured access to the contents of the investigation opened in Paris from May 2021 on the kidnapping of the journalist, known simply as “Kader” for security reasons.
According to new details emerging, it turns out that the so-called Interpreter was collaborating with the French army to locate a leader of the jihadist insurgency in Mali who had evaded their monitoring for some time.
Kadir had passed on information about the preparations for the meeting between Olivier Dubois and Abdallah ag Albakaye.
Albakaye, then the emir of Talataye featured prominently in the radar of the French in their hunt for jihadist leaders linked to Al Qaeda or the Islamic State in the Sahel region.
According to RFI, TV5 Monde, Liberation and Le Monde, who collaborated on the case, the French authorities had reason to entertain fear that Dubois would be kidnapped on the day of his meeting with the jihadist leader.
However, Mr. Dubois was never warned of this possibility. He informed the French embassy in Bamako of his trip when he boarded his flight to Gao but was never discouraged from going there.
The question is therefore whether the French army wanted to use Olivier Dubois as bait to get to Abdallah Ag Albakaye?
If an operation was never envisaged, it is almost certain that it was planned to pinpoint the jihadist through a device placed in the telephone of “Kader” who, in the end, was dismissed as an interpreter by Ag Albakaye’s security details.
As a result, when he went to the seventh district of Gao, Olivier Dubois, after getting into a pick-up truck with four men, did not return until almost two years later.
His interview with the jihadist leader was supposed to last 45 minutes.
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