BAMAKO: A Malian court has detained and charged former Prime Minister Moussa Mara over a social media post criticizing shrinking democratic space under military rule in the West African nation, his lawyer said late Friday.
Mara is one of few public figures in the country who has been willing to openly question moves taken this year to dissolve political parties and grant the military government, led by Assimi Goita, a five-year mandate without elections.
Last month, authorities formally approved Goita’s five-year term and said it could be renewed as many times as necessary as Mali struggles to respond to a long-running jihadist insurgency. Goita assumed power after military coups in 2020 and 2021.
Mara had been summoned several times for questioning this month over a social media post dated July 4 expressing solidarity with government critics who have been jailed.
On July 21, his lawyer, Mountaga Tall, posted on social media site X that Mara had been barred from boarding a flight to Senegal to participate in a regional conference on peace and security.
On Friday, Mara was summoned by a judicial cybercrimes unit, and a prosecutor charged him with offenses including undermining the credibility of the state and spreading false information, Tall said in a statement.
Mara’s trial has been scheduled for September 29, Tall said. A government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case against Mara comes amid worsening insecurity in Mali. The past few months have seen a surge of deadly attacks by Jama’at Nusrat Al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda-linked group that also operates in Burkina Faso and Niger.
Analysts say the group’s battlefield tactics have grown increasingly sophisticated and that it has amassed substantial resources through raids on military posts, cattle rustling, hijacking of goods, kidnappings and taxes on local communities.
On Friday, the group said it had ambushed a convoy of Malian soldiers and Russian mercenaries in the Tenenkou locality in central Mali. Mali’s army confirmed the ambush in a statement on X. Neither statement gave a death toll.
Mali ex-prime minister to stand trial over social media post, lawyer says
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Mali ex-prime minister to stand trial over social media post, lawyer says
- Mara is one of few public figures in the country who has been willing to openly question moves taken this year to dissolve political parties and grant the military government
Rubio says technical talks with Denmark, Greenland officials over Arctic security have begun
- US Secretary of State on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland
WASHINGTON: Technical talks between the US, Denmark and Greenland over hatching an Arctic security deal are now underway, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland agreed to create a working group aimed at addressing differences with the US during a Washington meeting earlier this month with Vice President JD Vance and Rubio.
The group was created after President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for the US to take over Greenland, a Danish territory, in the name of countering threats from Russia and China — calls that Greenland, Denmark and European allies forcefully rejected.
“It begins today and it will be a regular process,” Rubio said of the working group, as he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We’re going to try to do it in a way that isn’t like a media circus every time these conversations happen, because we think that creates more flexibility on both sides to arrive at a positive outcome.”
The Danish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday’s talks focused on “how we can address US concerns about security in the Arctic while respecting the red lines of the Kingdom.” Red lines refers to the sovereignty of Greenland.
Trump’s renewed threats in recent weeks to annex Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of a NATO ally, has roiled US-European relations.
Trump this month announced he would slap new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries that opposed his takeover calls, only to abruptly drop his threats after a “framework” for a deal over access to the mineral-rich island was reached, with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s help. Few details of the agreement have emerged.
After stiff pushback from European allies to his Greenland rhetoric, Trump also announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that he would take off the table the possibility of using American military force to acquire Greenland.
The president backed off his tariff threats and softened his language after Wall Street suffered its biggest losses in months over concerns that Trump’s Greenland ambitions could spur a trade war and fundamentally rupture NATO, a 32-member transatlantic military alliance that’s been a linchpin of post-World War II security.
Rubio on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland.
“We’ve got a little bit of work to do, but I think we’re going to wind up in a good place, and I think you’ll hear the same from our colleagues in Europe very shortly,” Rubio said.
Rubio during Wednesday’s hearing also had a pointed exchange with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, about Trump repeatedly referring to Greenland as Iceland while at Davos.
“Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we’re all familiar with presidents that have verbal stumbles,” Rubio said in responding to Kaine’s questions about Trump’s flub — taking a veiled dig at former President Joe Biden. “We’ve had presidents like that before. Some made a lot more than this one.”
