Kidal base satellite image shows a chekan armored vehicle (built for the Wagner group) on September 12, 2024.
Interviewed by a collective of journalists denounce “kidnapping, arbitrary arrests, lack of contact with the outside world and systematic torture, sometimes to death.”
An investigation by the Journalists Collective Forbidden Storiesthis Thursday, reveals that the mercenaries of the Russian company Wagner “kidnapped and detained hundreds of civilians in old bases of the UN and in military fields shared with the Malian army.”
From two state blows in 2020 and 2021, which brought to power a board led by General Assimi Goïta, Mali broke his alliance with the old French colonial power to become military and politically to Russia, namely resorting to the services of Mali three and a half years ago.
Beating and drowning in 6 locations
The people interviewed in the investigation from refugee camps in neighboring Mauritania, witnessed the abuses suffered in the prisons of mercenaries.
Some of the survivors said they suffered Drowning simulation, were beaten with electrical cables and burned with cigarette ends.
The inquiry reveals a series of abuses: “Ravens, arbitrary arrests, lack of contact with the outside world and systematic torture, sometimes even to death“.
The collective identified six locations where mercenaries detained civilians between 2022 and 2024, but the number can be “much higher,” according to journalists.
“Our consortium was able to identify six military bases where Civilian Malian were arrested and tortured by Wagner between 2022 and 2024: Bapho, Kidal, Nampala, Niafunké, Sévaré and Sofara,” reveals the investigation, carried out in collaboration with French television channel French Daily Le Monde and the Independent Russian News Portal.
Mali asked for help three and a half years ago to the Wagner group to fight Islamic fundamentalist groups that made thousands of dead in the territory. The country never formally recognized the presence of the mercenaries, claiming to have resorted to Russian instructors.
Last week, a Wagner -linked social network channel announced that the Group was leaving Mali.
Its contingents will be reinstated in the successor, Africa Corps, another organization under the control of the Russian Ministry of Defense, according to diplomatic and security sources.
Wagner’s brutal methods on the ground have been regularly reported by non-governmental human rights organizations.
In a report, the UN accused the Malian Army and foreign combatants of having executed at least 500 people In March 2022, during an operation against Islamic fundamentalists in Moura, in the center of the country, which the Maliana Board denied. According to Western, these foreign combatants were members of the Wagner organization.
Last April, bodies were discovered around a Malian military field, a few days after dozens of civilians, mostly members of the Peule community, were detained by the army and Wagner mercenaries.
