APA – Bamako (Mali) – Visibly tired, Aliou Toure, the Malian journalist who was reported missing was found safe and sound on the outskirts of Bamako.
Touré reprtedly disappeared on the evening of Thursday 6 April and reappeared in the early hours of Monday 10 April.
He was surrounded by some of his colleagues, including the president of the Bandjougou Press House, Mr Danté.
He led a crisis meeting made up of several press associations, set up the day after the disappearance of the journalist only to find him safe and sound.
Media professionals mobilised to avert another unresolved disappearance after another journalist, Birama Touré, who disappeared in January in almost the same circumstances and has not been heard from since.
International arrest warrants have been issued for certain personalities, such as the son of the late president, Karim Kéïta – who was the chairman of the National Assembly’s defence committee at the time of the events – and the former head of the intelligence services.
However, there is still no indication of what really happened to the journalist, who worked for the investigative weekly ‘Le Sphinx’.
Two other Malian journalists, Hamadoun Nialibouly (Radio Dande Douentza, the voice of Douentza) and Moussa M’Bana Dicko (Radio Dandé Haïré, the voice of Haïré) have been in the same situation since 2020.
Aliou Touré, the director of the newspaper ‘Le Démocrate’ hosts a radio programme in Bamako and is best known as one of the apologists for prime polemicist Mohamed Youssouf Bathily, known as Ras Bath, who has been under arrest since mid-March after describing the death of former Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga a little over a year ago as a murder crime.
Aliou Touré was the administrative secretary of Ras Bath’s political movement, the Collective for the Development of the Republic (CDR). On the evening of Thursday 6 April, he was leaving a press conference he had co-organised to demand the release of Ras Bath, whose trial is scheduled for mid-June.
The real circumstances of his disappearance, let alone his reappearance, are still not known.
However, it appears to be a case of kidnapping, as the journalist had replaced Ras Bath in the flagship programme he presented every Wednesday on a Bamako radio station before his arrest, in which he was very critical of the current junta.
The state in which he was found also suggests that he was not in good hands.
The crisis unit set up to search for him said it would remain mobilised to defend freedom of expression, opinion and the press.
In addition to the release of the journalist, the activist Hassane Tamboura, who had also disappeared after his group, the Mouvement Populaire pour la Paix (Popular Movement for Peace), made virulent statements about the current administration of the country by the transitional authorities reappeared in almost the same condition as Touré.
MD/ac/lb/as/APA