BAMAKO, Mali: Mali’s army and Russian mercenaries killed dozens of civilians during a military operation last month in northern Mali, civil organization and community members alleged Friday, amid a surge in violence after the ruling junta broke off a peace agreement with rebel groups.
The killings took place from June 20 to 29 in the Abeibara in the Kidal region, the civil society groups and residents said. The Malian military says it has no knowledge of the alleged killings, but says military operations are taking place throughout the country.
The region is a former stronghold of a rebellion by militants in the Tuareg ethnic group who are fighting the army in a conflict where civilians increasingly have become the main victims. Some of the militants have formerly been allied with Al-Qaeda.
Hamadine Driss Ag Mohamed, son of Abeibara’s village chief, told The Associated Press on Friday that Malian soldiers and fighters from the Russian mercenary group Wagner had killed 46 civilians.
“The Malian and Wagner soldiers executed old men and shepherds and stole everything they found in the camps such as money and valuable jewelry,” he said.
Mali and its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger have long battled insurgencies by armed groups, including many allied with the Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (Daesh).
Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and have sought military help instead from Russia’s mercenary units, such as the private security company Wagner and its likely successor, Africa Corps.
In December 2023, a United Nations peacekeeping force created 10 years earlier and aimed at stabilizing Mali after a Tuareg rebellion in 2012, pulled out of the country at the request of the junta, which called the mission a failure.
Following last month’s violence in Abeibara, images of lifeless bodies and incinerated campsites circulated on social networks for several days. The Associated Press has not been able to verify them.
Citizen’s Observatory for Monitoring and Defending the Human Rights of the Azawad People, a civil society organization also known as Kal akal, said in a statement Friday that there were at least 60 civilians killed in the Abeibara area and that they were buried in mass graves.
The group denounced “a vast campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Russians of the Wagner group, in the company of the Malian army.”
A spokesman for the Malian army, Col. Maj. Souleymane Dembélé, said the military was unaware of the alleged killings. “It’s true that there are military operations underway throughout the national territory,” Dembélé told the AP over the phone. “But I have no information on these accusations.”
More than a decade of instability has followed the Tuareg rebellion, though in 2015 the Tuareg rebel groups signed the peace deal with the government that was welcomed by the United Nations.
But following the military coup in 2020, Mali’s junta broke the peace agreement with the Tuareg rebel groups and attacked their stronghold of Kidal in 2023. Since then, Kidal has been plagued by violence, particularly against civilians.
Malian army and Russian mercenaries accused of killing dozens of civilians in Kidal region
https://arab.news/7jgv3
Malian army and Russian mercenaries accused of killing dozens of civilians in Kidal region
- Killings took place from June 20 to 29 in the Abeibara, Kidal region, say civil society groups and residents
- Mali military denies knowledge of the killings. Mali has long battled armed groups, including many allied with the Al-Qaeda and Daesh
Trump sues the BBC for defamation over editing of January 6 speech, seeks up to $10 billion in damages
- A BBC spokesperson told Reuters earlier on Monday that it had “no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point
- The BBC is funded through a mandatory license fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught
WASHING: President Donald Trump sued the BBC on Monday for defamation over edited clips of a speech that made it appear he directed supporters to storm the US Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he deems untrue or unfair. Trump accused Britain’s publicly owned broadcaster of defaming him by splicing together parts of a January 6, 2021 speech, including one section where he told supporters to march on the Capitol and another where he said “fight like hell.” It omitted a section in which he called for peaceful protest.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges the BBC defamed him and violated a Florida law that bars deceptive and unfair trade practices. He is seeking $5 billion in damages for each of the lawsuit’s two counts. The BBC has apologized to Trump, admitted an error of judgment and acknowledged that the edit gave the mistaken impression that he had made a direct call for violent action. But it has said there is no legal basis to sue.
Trump, in his lawsuit filed Monday in Miami federal court, said the BBC despite its apology “has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses.”
The BBC is funded through a mandatory license fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said in a statement the BBC “has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda.”
A BBC spokesperson told Reuters earlier on Monday that it had “no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point. Our position remains the same.” The broadcaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed.
CRISIS LED TO RESIGNATIONS
Facing one of the biggest crises in its 103-year history, the BBC has said it has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.
The dispute over the clip, featured on the BBC’s “Panorama” documentary show shortly before the 2024 presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, leading to the resignations of its two most senior officials.
Trump’s lawyers say the BBC caused him overwhelming reputational and financial harm.
The documentary drew scrutiny after the leak of a BBC memo by an external standards adviser that raised concerns about how it was edited, part of a wider investigation of political bias at the publicly funded broadcaster.
The documentary was not broadcast in the United States.
Trump may have sued in the US because defamation claims in Britain must be brought within a year of publication, a window that has closed for the “Panorama” episode.
To overcome the US Constitution’s legal protections for free speech and the press, Trump will need to prove not only that the edit was false and defamatory but also that the BBC knowingly misled viewers or acted recklessly.
The broadcaster could argue that the documentary was substantially true and its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said. It could also claim the program did not damage Trump’s reputation.
Other media have settled with Trump, including CBS and ABC when Trump sued them following his comeback win in the November 2024 election.
Trump has filed lawsuits against the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and a newspaper in Iowa, all three of which have denied wrongdoing. The attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 was aimed at blocking Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win over Trump in the 2020 US election.
