French soldiers have killed a Malian militant leader suspected of being responsible for the kidnapping and death of two French journalists in 2013, French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly said on Friday.
Parly said that French forces in the Sahel region killed “four terrorists” during an operation in northern Mali on Saturday last week, including Bayes Ag Bakabo, the prime suspect in the deaths of Radio France Internationale reporters Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon.
“His neutralisation means the end of a long wait,” Parly said, adding that Bakabo was in the village of Aguelhok and was allegedly preparing an attack against UN peacekeeping forces when he was killed.
Dupont and Verlon, both in their 50s and veteran journalists, were seized in the flashpoint northern Malian town of Kidal in November 2013 after interviewing a separatist Tuareg leader.
Their bullet-riddled bodies were found a few hours later, with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claiming the killings as revenge for France’s intervention against militant groups in the country earlier that year.
A French investigation concluded that Bakabo drove the pickup truck used to kidnap the two journalists.
The exact circumstances of their deaths have never been revealed, and relatives say that military secrecy has hampered efforts toward that end.
In November last year, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Agnes Callamard said that “the alleged perpetrators have been named, but are yet to be arrested and prosecuted.”
Callamard urged the governments of France and Mali “to advance the investigation without further delay so that justice may be served.”
Parly on Friday said that the operation “illustrates one of the main priorities of France in the Sahel region: taking down the main heads of terrorist groups that are causing havoc in the region.”
The news of Bakabo’s death emerged just a day after French President Emmanuel Macron announced a drawdown of French troops in the Sahel region, who number 5,100 in bases across the arid and volatile region on the southern fringe of the Sahara desert.
Macron did not give figures for the drawdown, but said that he wanted future French involvement to be limited to counterterror operations as part of a multi-nation European force.
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