DAKAR: The Malian army and foreign fighters executed at least 500 people during an anti-militant operation in Mali in March 2022, according to a much-awaited UN report released on Friday.
The figures by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) amount to the worst atrocity the Sahel country has experienced since a militant insurgency flared in 2012.
It is also the most damning document yet against Mali’s armed forces and their foreign allies.
Their nationality is not explicitly identified in the report, although Mali has brought in Russians that western countries and others say are Wagner mercenaries.
Describing events that unfolded in the central town of Moura between March 27-31 2022, the OHCHR said it had “reasonable grounds to believe that at least 500 people were killed in violation of norms, standards, rules and/or principles of international law.”
The victims were “executed by the FAMa (Malian Armed Forces) and foreign military personnel” who had complete control over the area, it said.
The report was published after a lengthy investigation by the human rights division of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA.
Around 20 women and seven children were among those killed, while evidence suggests 58 women and girls were victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence, the report said.
Acts of torture were carried out on people who had been detained, it added.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called the findings “extremely disturbing.”
“Summary executions, rape and torture during armed conflict amount to war crimes and could, depending on the circumstances, amount to crimes against humanity,” he said in a statement.
Mali is ruled by a military junta which in 2020 toppled the country’s elected president amid protests over the failure to roll back the militants.
Since then, the junta has brought in Russian operatives and warplanes to help its beleaguered armed forces and severed ties with France, the country’s traditional ally.
It says the Russians are providing military training and denies accusations that they are Wagner mercenaries.
The UN report does not explicitly say who the foreign fighters were.
However, it cites Malian official statements on Russian military “instructors,” as well as comments attributed to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wagner’s presence in Mali.
The report also cites local testimony, collected by UN investigators, describing the foreigners as white men in fatigues speaking an “unknown” language — indicating they were not speaking French, the official language, or English.
Witnesses said the foreign soldiers “supervised” the operations, according to the report.
Moura, in the Mopti region of central Mali, has for years been known as a stronghold of the Katiba Macina, a group affiliated with the Al-Qaeda-linked Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM).
The report details the arrival of Malian soldiers and their allies, supported by five helicopters, in the late morning on March 27, 2022.
A livestock fair had that day attracted thousands of civilians who had come to buy supplies in preparation for Ramadan.
About 30 Katiba Macina members were mingling with the fairgoers and civilians that day, the report said.
A helicopter reportedly opened fire “indiscriminately” in the direction of the market, and the militants returned fire.
Around 30 people, including a dozen militants, were killed.
The Malian army took control of the area within a few hours and arrested around 3,000 people, rounding them up in four locations, according to the report.
They reportedly continued to sweep the area in the following days.
Malian soldiers and their allies “allegedly selected several hundred people who were summarily executed over at least four days,” the report said.
The men executed were allegedly chosen on the basis of signs such as having long beards.
The victims were reportedly buried in mass graves.
On April 1, 2022, the junta described the events in Moura as a successful anti-militant operation that had put 203 “terrorists” out of action.
But five days later, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said 300 civilian men, some of them suspected militants, were summarily killed. White foreigners, identified by several sources as Russian, took part, it said.
A Malian military court prosecutor announced an investigation in April 2022.
The new report comes as the UN is preparing to consider whether to renew the mandate of the 10-year-old MINUSMA mission.
The Malian authorities frequently attack MINUSMA’S activities in the field of human rights, and earlier this year expelled the head of its rights division.
The report is based on a seven-month investigation between March and October 2022 and on 157 individual interviews and 11 group interviews.
The junta persistently denied access to Moura for the investigators, apart from one initial flyover.
Army, ‘foreign’ fighters killed 500 in Mali in March 2022: UN report
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Army, ‘foreign’ fighters killed 500 in Mali in March 2022: UN report
- Mali is ruled by a military junta which in 2020 toppled the country’s elected president amid protests over the failure to roll back the militants
Bangladesh mourns Khaleda Zia, its first woman prime minister
- Ousted ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who imprisoned Zia in 2018, offers condolences on her death
- Zia’s rivalry with Hasina, both multiple-term PMs, shaped Bangladeshi politics for a generation
DHAKA: Bangladesh declared three days of state mourning on Tuesday for Khaleda Zia, its first female prime minister and one of the key figures on the county’s political scene over the past four decades.
Zia entered public life as Bangladesh’s first lady when her husband, Ziaur Rahman, a 1971 Liberation War hero, became president in 1977.
Four years later, when her husband was assassinated, she took over the helm of his Bangladesh Nationalist Party and, following the 1982 military coup led by Hussain Muhammad Ershad, was at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement.
Arrested several times during protests against Ershad’s rule, she first rose to power following the victory of the BNP in the 1991 general election, becoming the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto.
Zia also served as a prime minister of a short-lived government of 1996 and came to power again for a full five-year term in 2001.
She passed away at the age of 80 on Tuesday morning at a hospital in Dhaka after a long illness.
She was a “symbol of the democratic movement” and with her death “the nation has lost a great guardian,” Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus said in a condolence statement, as the government announced the mourning period.
“Khaleda Zia was the three-time prime minister of Bangladesh and the country’s first female prime minister. ... Her role against President Ershad, an army chief who assumed the presidency through a coup, also made her a significant figure in the country’s politics,” Prof. Amena Mohsin, a political scientist, told Arab News.
“She was a housewife when she came into politics. At that time, she just lost her husband, but it’s not that she began politics under the shadow of her husband, president Ziaur Rahman. She outgrew her husband and built her own position.”
For a generation, Bangladeshi politics was shaped by Zia’s rivalry with Sheikh Hasina, who has served as prime minister for four terms.
Both carried the legacy of the Liberation War — Zia through her husband, and Hasina through her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, widely known as the “Father of the Nation,” who served as the country’s first president until his assassination in 1975.
During Hasina’s rule, Zia was convicted in corruption cases and imprisoned in 2018. From 2020, she was placed under house arrest and freed only last year, after a mass student-led uprising, known as the July Revolution, ousted Hasina, who fled to India.
In November, Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia for her deadly crackdown on student protesters and remains in self-exile.
Unlike Hasina, Zia never left Bangladesh.
“She never left the country and countrymen, and she said that Bangladesh was her only address. Ultimately, it proved true,” Mohsin said.
“Many people admire Khaleda Zia for her uncompromising stance in politics. It’s true that she was uncompromising.”
On the social media of Hasina’s Awami League party, the ousted leader also offered condolences to Zia’s family, saying that her death has caused an “irreparable loss to the current politics of Bangladesh” and the BNP leadership.
The party’s chairmanship was assumed by Zia’s eldest son, Tarique Rahman, who returned to Dhaka just last week after more than 17 years in exile.
He had been living in London since 2008, when he faced multiple convictions, including an alleged plot to assassinate Hasina. Bangladeshi courts acquitted him only recently, following Hasina’s removal from office, making his return legally possible.
He is currently a leading contender for prime minister in February’s general elections.
“We knew it for many years that Tarique Rahman would assume his current position at some point,” Mohsin said.
“He should uphold the spirit of the July Revolution of 2024, including the right to freedom of expression, a free and fair environment for democratic practices, and more.”
