French Foreign Affairs minister Jean-Yves Le Drian confirmed on Sunday that a French journalist who disappeared last month in Mali's northern city of Gao had probably been taken hostage by Islamist militants in West Africa's arid Sahel region.
Olivier Dubois this month appeared in a video appealing to authorities to do everything they can to free him from the JNIM (al Qaeda North Africa) holding him.
French authorities have previously only confirmed Dubois' disappearance.
"Everything leads us to believe he's the hostage of a jihadist group", Le Drian told RTL radio.
(Reporting by John Irish and Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by David Goodman)
