The juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are looking into a French journalist’s work on terrorist propaganda

French writer and researcher Wassim Nasr is being investigated by prosecutors in junta-led Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. They say he is “defending terrorism” because he writes about jihadist attacks.

Nasr is a security expert who works for the TV station France 24 and often talks about the Islamist uprising that started in Mali in 2012 and has since spread across the Sahel area of West Africa.

Several news sources quoted him after the fact for his in-depth analysis of a rare jihadist attack on several key sites in Bamako, Mali’s capital, on September 17.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger all had prosecutors from terrorism-focused court divisions make the same speech, which was shown on their national TV late Wednesday night.

They said Nasr said things about the recent attack in Bamako and an attack in 2023 on the town of Djibo in Burkina Faso that “amount to blatant acts of publicity and support” for jihadist activity.

It was said that Nasr is being looked into on claims of criminal conspiracy, aiding in terrorist acts, and apologizing for terrorist acts.

Through a message, Nasr, who lives in France, said he had nothing to say.

“A thought for Sahelian colleagues and for those who suffer the arbitrary nature of these regimes in flesh and blood,” he wrote.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, which are all neighbors, are at the center of the Sahel conflict. They are all run by military governments that took power in a series of coups that began in 2020.

Since then, their juntas have turned away from traditional Western partners and turned their attention to Russia. They have also left ECOWAS, which was West Africa’s main economic and political bloc, and made their own three-way alliance.

France 24 and other foreign news outlets have already been banned because of how they covered the uprising.