French forces tried to use a journalist's visit to northern Mali to track a jihadist leader but failed to prevent the reporter from being kidnapped by the militants, a joint investigation by RFI, newspapers Le Monde and Liberation and broadcaster TV5Monde has found.
While the investigation took more than 18 months, the revelations were withheld until the release of Olivier Dubois, 48, so as not to jeopardise him or the negotiations to secure his freedom.
The report comes amid an official investigation into what happened to the journalist, who was abducted in the northern Malian town of Gao in April 2021.
Dubois released
Dubois flew home to France in March this year, nearly two years after he was kidnapped by the Al-Qaeda-linked Group to Support Islam and Muslims (JNIM).
At the time he told journalists: "I was never mistreated, nor humiliated, nor beaten … there were occasional tough times but no physical difficulties such as others have suffered."
French and Malian judicial documents that were accessed during research for the media investigation indicate that a fixer working with Dubois had informed France's anti-jihadist Barkhane force of his plans to interview a jihadist leader.
Operation Barkhane was an anti-insurgent operation that started on 1 August 2014 and formally ended on 9 November 2022. It was led by the French military against Islamist groups in Africa's Sahel region.
Following up on the fixer's information, Barkhane planned to track the leader back to his base, but abandoned the operation at the last minute, the media investigation found.
However the French military did not deploy the necessary means to prevent the journalist from being kidnapped, the investigation concluded.
A diplomatic source cited by French news agency AFP said a letter had been sent to Dubois the day before he was kidnapped formally advising him against making the trip.
In addition Liberation, for whom Dubois was writing at the time, had refused to back his plan to interview the jihadist in view of the risks.
An internal army probe found in late 2021 that there had been "no personal fault within the Barkhane force" over the kidnapping.
But "the sensitivity of the topic was not sufficiently taken into account so as to allow ... a dissuasive action with regards to the journalist", it said.
French forces withdrew from Mali last year following a fallout with the country's ruling junta.
Reporters Without Borders reacts
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) joined the civil party in the legal proceedings opened by the Paris National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office into the kidnapping of Dubois.
Arnaud Froger, RSF head of investigations, told the journalists carrying out the media investigation there had clearly been “reckless risk-taking” because the army had identified the risk of Dubois' abduction.
"We must not minimise the responsibility of Olivier Dubois, of the journalist," Froger said. "It was his interview project and it was, by its nature, an extremely risky project. He knew that.”
The moment the army became aware of interview plans, Froger added, there were two possible reactions: either try to dissuade Dubois, or put in place a mechanism to ensure a kidnapping could not take place.
Nevertheless, he said, the intelligence operation continued.
“In this case, he was put in even more danger than [he had put himself in] and this is what seems to us to be, at the very least, negligence," Froger said.
“Using a journalist as a Trojan horse to carry out an intelligence operation on the one hand raises the question of the validity of the approach, and secondly it poses a problem because this operation was carried out without Olivier knowing what was going on around him."
The French Foreign Ministry declined to comment because of the ongoing offical investigation.
The military also declined to comment.
(with wires)
