A hostage of al-Qaeda made it back to France. Her return to Mali is sparking anger.

Petronin recently told French media she returned to Mali in March, mere months after she was released. Last week, Malian police called for the 76-year-old to be apprehended and escorted to the capital, Bamako. They did not say why Petronin was being sought by authorities, according to the Associated Press, though she had reportedly failed to get a visa to reenter the country.

“When we have citizens who are taken hostage, it is our troops who save them, at a risk to their own lives,” said French government spokesman Gabriel Attal during a Wednesday news briefing. “There were soldiers who were killed in operations to save hostages imprisoned in foreign countries … we must have respect for our soldiers.”

Petronin, however, pushed back on being characterized as reckless. She told Agence France-Presse Wednesday that Mali, where she had spent decades, was “home.” She had reportedly found it difficult to readjust to life back in Europe and being away from her adopted Malian daughter.

The aid worker was greeted by French President Emmanuel Macron on her return to the country last year, but had told reporters then that she was looking forward to returning to her work in West Africa.

In 1998, Petronin founded a charity to provide food and health services to underprivileged orphans in Gao, the largest city in northern Mali. Located in the Sahel, a semiarid region south of the Sahara Desert, Gao and the surrounding area have been a West African hotbed for extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda for years.

A civil war that broke out in 2012 had brought anti-government separatists and Islamist militants together. They managed to exert control over several towns and cities, including storied Timbuktu.

Since then, the French and Malian forces, as well as United Nations peacekeepers, have fought to recoup territories occupied by rebel militias and al-Qaeda sympathizers. But the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban earlier this year has encouraged Islamist extremists in West Africa, leaving many fearful about the region’s future as France moves to pull back its military presence.

In an interview with French newspaper Le Monde, journalist Anthony Fouchard, who wrote a book about Petronin’s years as a hostage, said the aid worker had been residing in Switzerland. Mali had denied her visa application, he said, but Petronin managed to enter the country by crossing a border with Senegal.

Senegal’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.

Petronin “now lives in the Malian capital, being discreet but not hiding,” Fouchard told Le Monde. “People routinely recognize her in the street.”

Her son, Sébastien Chadaud-Pétronin, told French broadcaster BFM according to the Associated Press that she had been deeply unhappy in Europe and was not taking chances.

“She is not in the desert,” he said. “She is not taking risks.”

“She is an old lady in the autumn of her life and she just wants to be in the place where she feels most comfortable,” he added.