Member of the Malian Armed Forces in Kati, north of Bamako on January 20, 2022. FLORENT VERGNES / AFP
The 41-page document, soberly titled “Report on the Events of Moura, March 27-31, 2022,” released Friday, May 12, by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, provides a a terrible challenge to the Malian army is presented by Wagner’s accompanying Russian paramilitaries, here depicted as “foreign military personnel”.
The United Nations states that it has “reasonable grounds to believe that at least 500 people would have been killed in violation of (…) humanitarian law in a military operation more than a year ago in the village of Moura, some fifty kilometers away”. from Mopti, in the center of Mali, through these joint forces. Actions that, according to High Commissioner Volker Türk, could constitute war crimes and “depending on the circumstances” also crimes against humanity.
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Specifically, investigators from the Human Rights Division of the United Nations Mission in Mali state that “about twenty civilians are involved”. killed on March 27 by air strikes by the Malian Armed Forces (FAMA) and foreign military personnel to prevent the population from fleeing.” Then, after a three-hour attack that reportedly killed a dozen jihadists present that market day, died “At least 500 people, including about twenty women and seven children.” [ont été] “Executed by the same perpetrators between March 27 and March 31 after the area was fully controlled.” The fact-finding mission says it has the names of at least 238 of those victims and has “reasonable grounds to believe that 58 women and girls were victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence by FAMA.”
“Extreme Brutality”
For its part, following the events, the General Staff of the Malian Armed Forces had assured that it had “carried out a large-scale air-to-land operation (…) using very specific information that made it possible to locate the site.” Holding a meeting between the various katibas (jihadists) in Moura, a terrorist stronghold for several years” and boasted a “very high number” of 203 fighters of armed terrorist groups killed. A version that was quickly challenged by statements from the press and human rights organizations.
The NGO Human Rights Watch then condemned “the worst atrocity” committed in Mali since the conflict began in 2012, citing the massacre of “about 300 civilians, the vast majority from the Fulani community. As a result of these “allegations of alleged ill-treatment of civilians”, the Malian military judiciary announced the opening of an investigation, the first results of which are still pending.
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In fact, Bamako first tried to prevent any independent investigation, then blocked the publication of the work of the UN human rights department, whose director Guillaume Ngefa was declared “persona non grata” in Mali in February. Although its teams were not authorized by the Malian authorities to go directly to the site of the massacre, they were able to obtain 157 interviews with survivors, witnesses, those assigned to collect and bury the bodies, displaced persons, rape victims, satellite imagery and forensic reports to trace the course of these five-day killings in Moura, a village that fell under the control of the Katiba Macina, allied with al-Qaeda, due to the extreme brutality of the Malian soldiers and the “white gunmen” who supported them.
“shoot you in the back”
Without calling them Wagner’s paramilitaries, he recalls that the Malian junta recognizes the arrival of the “trainers” sent by Moscow and that the head of Russian diplomacy himself has declared that Bamako and the company founded by Evgueni Prigojine are part of a trade agreement The report’s authors state that these “whites,” who spoke “an unknown language, were sorted to determine who was considered a jihadist before sending the victims so identified in the direction where the elements the FAMA executed them by shooting them in the back.” . »
In the same logic of obstructing the disclosure of the truth as its ally, on April 9, 2022, Russia used its veto power in the Security Council to demand the opening of an independent investigation. Since then, Moscow and Bamako have repeatedly denounced the use of the fight to protect human rights for political ends. In December in Geneva, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop denounced “the instrumentalization of the human rights issue for the geopolitical agendas of certain partners” at a meeting with the UN High Commissioner on this subject.
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“The Malian authorities are trying to prevent the report from being published and downplaying its content, but they are unsuccessful. Despite the delay, the report will come out,” a source in Geneva assured at the time. With a delay of more than a month, it is now done. The whole question now is to know what the legal ramifications will be, particularly at the level of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that has jurisdiction over Mali, and what the political implications will be while the United Nations mission is on the ground carried on in a more climatic climate hostile every day in Bamako.