Malick Konate, director of online news channel Horon TV and a video reporter for several international outlets including AFP, has for several months been receiving threats from social media users accusing him of being against the country's military rulers.

Those death threats have escalated since French television channel BFMTV last week aired an investigation into the presence of mercenaries from the Russian Wagner group in the Sahel nation.

The junta, which seized power in Bamako in 2020, denies having called on the security group to fight a jihadist insurgency.

The Collective for the Defence of the Military, a group that defends the junta, on Thursday accused Konate of "active and negative participation" in the making of a film "defaming" the army.

In a Facebook post, it has accused the journalist of "high treason against the sovereign people of Mali" and has urged for an investigation against him as well as his "internal and external accomplices".

BFMTV has said that Konate "never took part in writing the report", and had only interviewed members of another organisation in favour of a Russian intervention with the approval of its head.

"This journalist's plight, which is extremely worrying, is indicative of the free fall that press freedom is experiencing in Mali," said Sadibou Marong, the director of RSF's sub-Saharan Africa bureau.

"Malick Konate now fears for his life simply for doing his job as a journalist by participating in a documentary," he added.

"The authorities must react and must protect journalism and the freedom to inform in a country where media professionals are barely able to work freely any more for fear of reprisals."

Konate shot the footage for BFMTV months ago, and has been abroad for several weeks.

Authorities last week suspended one of the country's main news channels for two months following criticism of the ruling junta by one of its star journalists.

Over the past months, the military junta has shut down local radio and television news broadcasts by Radio France Internationale and France 24, RSF said.

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