United Nations (USA) (AFP)

The families of the two journalists of Radio France Internationale (RFI) kidnapped and killed in November 2013 in Mali denounced to the UN the silence of the French authorities on the circumstances of these deaths, accusing them of lies and lack of humanity.

Ghislaine Dupont, 57, and Claude Verlon, 55, were abducted during a report and then killed on November 2, 2013 near Kidal, a few months after the French operation Serval intended to counter jihadists threatening to take Bamako.

"I can not let myself go to the agony that has been in me for six years," said the mother of Ghislaine, Marie-Solange Poinsot, soon 90 years, at the inauguration of an exhibition of drawings organized by the At UN headquarters to fight impunity after the death of journalists

"For six years, we have been waiting for the truth," she lamented. "It will not give them back, but maybe we'll be a little quieter."

While an RFI investigation questioned in July the official version of a hostage-taking failed by a jihadist group, revealing that French special forces were chasing the kidnappers during the events, Marie-Solange Poinsot is convinced that "the army holds the truth".

"We learned things that we had never said" and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Minister of Defense, Jean-Yves Le Drian, "did not have much humanity towards me", a- she regretted.

On the side of the military, it is "total" silence while former President Francois Hollande had stressed that the authorities "had nothing to hide," continued the mother of Ghislaine Dupont. "I feel almost hate, because these people in power, it is we who put them in trusting them and we are there".

"We are lying, we were promised to tell us the truth but today we know nothing," added Marie-Pierre Ritleng, sister of Claude Verlon. "There are things we do not want to tell us" and "no information" comes from the Ministry of the Armies, she added.

Coming to support these two families, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnès Callamard, said that "impunity in France was unacceptable". "It should be the government's fight instead of being put aside," she said.

"Impunity is what poisons our societies," said the expert who investigated the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. We must know "what were the circumstances of the murder of Ghislaine and Claude, who was present during and after, who failed in his duty, who sought to hide the truth to families," she said.

The assassination of the journalists of RFI, claimed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is the subject of investigations but the light has never been made on its circumstances.

© 2019 AFP