BAMAKO: Kidnapped Malian politician Soumaila Cisse and French aid worker Sophie Petronin were freed on Thursday, Mali’s presidency said, after lengthy periods in the hands of Islamist insurgents.
Their release follows a tense few days as reports the Malian authorities had freed scores of suspected militants over the weekend fuelled expectations of an imminent prisoner swap.
“The ex-hostages are on their way to Bamako,” Mali’s presidency said on Twitter.
Malian and French authorities had neither confirmed nor denied that talks about their potential release were ongoing.
Cisse, a popular politician who served as finance minister in the 1990s, was kidnapped by gunmen while campaigning in the northern region of Timbuktu in March, while Petronin, who ran a charity for malnourished and orphaned children, was abducted near the northern city of Gao in late 2016.
They are two high-profile examples of Mali’s acute security crisis caused by the growing reach of jihadist groups bent on overthrowing state authority, despite the intervention of thousands of international troops and the arrest of scores of suspected insurgents.
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