11 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The journalist Aliou Touré, editorial director of the newspaper ‘Le Démocrate Mali’, was released on Monday night after being missing for four days after being kidnapped last Thursday by armed men in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
The reporter detailed this Tuesday at a press conference that hooded and armed men kidnapped him when he was about to get into his vehicle after giving a conference in the capital to “condemn arbitrary arrests” and demand the release of the activist Ras Bath, has informed Radio France Internationale.
The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) opened on Monday an investigation into the disappearance of Touré, who is also administrative secretary of the Collective for the Defense of the Republic of Mali, and created a “crisis unit” on his case.
Finally, the journalist was released and returned home “safe and sound” late at night, reported the president of the Press House and coordinator of this crisis unit, El Hadj Bandiougou Danté, reported the Malijet news portal. .
In April, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders (SRF) denounced the increased dangers for informers working in the countries of the Sahel, warning that the region is becoming a “zone without information” due to deteriorating conditions. in this part of Africa.
“In Chad, Burkina Faso and Mali, the deterioration of the media situation has been aggravated by the rise to power of the military juntas. Their pressures and their patriotic mandates favor the development of commissioned journalism and a phenomenon of ‘ omertá’ around certain sensitive issues,” said Sadibou Marong, director of RSF’s sub-Saharan Africa office.
The NGO’s report pointed to a “maximum risk of kidnapping” and recalled that, despite the recent release of Olivier Dubois on March 20, Malian journalists Hamadoun Nialobouly and Moussa M’Bana Dicko are still missing.
